Body Scans and Bottlenecks: Optimizing Hospital CT Process Flows Case Discussion Questions: 1.Draw the process flow map for the original CT scan process. 2.Hospital management believed the new scanners represented a high-return investment. What factors would you take into account when calculating the difference in revenues represented by the new scanners versus the original units? 
 3.If the original process flows remained in place after the new CT scanners were installed, what level of scanning throughput could the hospital achieve? What hourly margins would result from using the new scanners with all other processes unchanged? How do these margins compare with using the old scanners? 
 4.What specific improvements might be made to improve the efficiency of the CT process flows? How would these improvements affect the margins? 
 5.What level of scanning throughput could the hospital achieve after the recommended improvements? What hourly margins would result from using the new scanners with all improvements in place? How would these margins compare with using the old scanners? 
 6.How many hours a day would the new scanners have to operate to handle 92,000 patients per year? Assume that scanners are operated for 300 days in a year. 
 7.If the technology of CT scanners continues to improve, how will process economics impact their purchase and utilization in hospitals and the healthcare system overall? 
 Case Analysis 1.Draw the process flow map for the original CT scan process. (Also draw these process flow maps for each step of process improvement.) 2.Hospital management believed the new scanners represented a high-return investment. What factors would you take into account when calculating the difference in revenues represented by the new scanners versus the original units?  The unit load is the amount of time spent by the resource per flow unit (CT scan in this case). Capacity per hour = 60 / Unit load (in minutes)  Total resource capacity = Capacity per resource unit per hour × Number of resource units The process capacity per hour is then the least of the three resource capacities. When operating at capacity, Utilization = Process capacity / Resource capacity When operating at capacity, the margin per scanner per hour is then obtained as the difference between the hourly revenue and the hourly cost, calculated as follows:  ResourceUnit        Capacity    Number of        Total Resourc   Proces Capacity         Utilization            load (min)       Per Hour      resource Units     capacity        per Hour                         Nurse        14              4.29             1      4.29                             43.8 Technologist32              1.875             1       1.875          1.875             100 CT            32             1.875               1     1.875                         100  Hourly revenue = Process capacity per hour × Revenue per scan Hourly cost = Number of nurses × Nurse cost per hour + Number of technologists × Technologist cost per hour + Process capacity per hour × Medical supply cost per scan  3.If the original process flows remained in place after the new CT scanners were installed, what level of scanning throughput could the hospital achieve? What hourly margins would result from using the new scanners with all other processes unchanged? How do these margins compare with using the old scanners? A representation of the original process is shown below:  With the old scanners, the technologist and the CT scanner are bottlenecks. Given that each CT scanner can perform 1.875 scans per hour, the six scanners together perform 11.25 scans per hour. To perform 55,000 scans per year, assuming 300 working days in the year, each scanner would have to operate 55,000 / (300 × 11.25) = 16.3 hours per day, or about 2 shifts of 8 hours daily. Revenue per hour per scanner = $500 × 1.875 = $937.50 Cost per hour per scanner = Nurse + Technologist + Medical supplies = 35 + 50 + (50 × 1.875) = $178.75 Margin per scanner per hour = $937.50 – $178.75 = 758.78 4.What specific improvements might be made to improve the efficiency of the CT process flows? How would these improvements affect the margins?  5.What level of scanning throughput could the hospital achieve after the recommended improvements? What hourly margins would result from using the new scanners with all improvements in place? How would these margins compare with using the old scanners?  Do the above table for: •New Scanners with Old Process •After Stage 1 Process Improvements •After Stage 2 Process Improvements •After Stage 3 Process Improvements 6.How many hours a day would the new scanners have to operate to handle 92,000 patients per year? Assume that scanners are operated for 300 days in a year.  7.If the technology of CT scanners continues to improve, how will process economics impact their purchase and utilization in hospitals and the healthcare system overall?