Capacity Planning at Arnold Palmer Hospital Case Summary

Capacity Planning at Arnold Palmer Hospital Case Summary

Introduction

Arnold Palmer Hospital is one of the six only hospitals that specialized in caring for women, children, and delivering babies that is located in Orlando, Florida. It has been expending in rapid growing ever since it opened in 1995. When it first open, there was only 281 beds in place, with a capacity of having 6,500 births per year. However, the number of births has an exponential growth of 12,978 in 2011. Now, Arnold Palmer Hospital is considering to expand the building and creating an 11-story building, so that it can hold up to 16,000 births per year.

Problems and Resolutions

The issue that Arnold Palmer Hospital is facing is its growing at exponentially with its capacity and will only continue to grow. It is currently facing the inability to meet their demands since it is limited to the number of beds they have. They are investment $100 million dollars into expanding the building that would increase the available beds by 150 to accommodate up to 16,000 childbirths per year. One recommendation would be expanding the whole entire building and operations of the hospital. They need to plan to overcome any constraints. From there, they would need to look at the financial factor that is needed for this expansion. Then in to do a cost analysis and look at various aspects of the building cost which would include construction, new machinery, facilities and staff, utilities, and other parts of the hospital. After a cost analysis, they would need to review it again and identify any other constraints before expanding.

Discussion Questions

1. Given the capacity planning discussion in the text (see Figure S7.6), what approach is being taken by Arnold Palmer Hospital toward matching capacity to demand?

The approach that Arnold Palmer Hospital is taking the number of childbirths per year surpassed the initial capacity of the hospital from the beginning, so we could remove that