In turning in your homework, you are asserting the following:The answers represent your own the work.
You did not copy answers from any other students, copied their files or portions thereof, took
screenshots of their work, or access any answers through websites that may have obtained
this homework and posted the answers.
You can consult with other students in your class, but they did NOT send you their file, or a
part of their file, that you then copy and paste into your own file and claim as your own work,
or copy their write-up, changing a few words here and there. You did not take screenshots
of their work. Similarly, if you are being asked for help, you should not email your completed
file to the student(s) who asking for help.
To do any of these things constitutes academic misconduct, and will result in an F for the course.
TYPE YOUR NAME BELOW IN ROW 22 ATTESTING THAT THIS ASSIGNMENT REPRESENTS YOUR
OWN WORK AND YOU DID NOT SEND YOUR FILE TO ANYONE ELSE
Put your input data in column F (and G), and
Question Answer
(a)
(b)
(c)
(d)
(e)
(f)
(g)
(h)
# ORs
staffed hrs per day
# proc per OR per day
Ave proc time
OR setup time
OR cleanup time
staff break time
ta in column F (and G), and then calculate your answers in column B
reduced OR setup and clean up times below in column G
UCLA HLTADM 413 Operations Management in Healthcare
Homework Module 5
Capacity Analysis
Your organization’s quality improvement team is continuing its analysis of ED flow analysis. You provided them
with the theoretical flow time analysis at last week’s meeting. But, now they are interested in the impact that
improving the net availability of resources in the ED will have on effective capacity. In addition, they have been
looking at resource availability in the Operating Rooms (ORs) and would like you to conduct some calculations
for them.
You will be submitting an Excel file with flow times for these two areas answered.
Point allocations for the problems are:
1. Question 1 ED: 20 points
2. Question 2 ORs: 30 points
The grading is based on completing the analytics correctly. Even if you arrive at the correct answers, full credit
will not be given if you hardwired in numbers into your formulas, rather than inserting the appropriate cell
references.
Note that in turning in your homework, you are asserting the following:
• The answers represent your own work. You did not copy answers from any other students, or access any
of this class’s previous years’ materials to complete this work.
• You can consult with other students in your class, but they should NOT send you their file, or a part of
their file, that you then copy and paste into your own file and claim as your own work, or copy their
write-up, changing a few words here and there. If a fellow student offers some help to you via zoom or
other online collaboration tool, you did NOT take screenshots of their work they may have shown you.
• Similarly, if you are being asked for help, you should not email your completed file to the student(s) who
is asking for help.
• To do any of these things constitutes academic misconduct and will result in an F for the course.
To submit your work:
1. TYPE YOUR NAME in the Excel worksheet called Academic Conduct Signature to verify that the work you
are turning in represents your own work.
2. Rename the Excel file with hw5
3. Submit the Excel file to Canvas. Do NOT email the file to me.
©Sandra Potthoff, PhD 2021
“Capacity Analysis”
Page 1
UCLA HLTADM 413 Operations Management in Healthcare
Question 1: ED Capacity
The ED quality improvement team is trying to understand the impact of resource unavailability/downtime
on its effective capacity and throughput. They have asked you to complete some analytic calculations to
help them decide where they might best target throughput improvement efforts for patients who require
lab and radiology tests, and end up needing to be admitted to the hospital. To answer this question, do the
following:
1. Open the Excel file in which you completed the Flow Rate and Capacity Analysis for the example in
Module 5. Copy the worksheet into the Module 5 Excel Homework file. See the directions provided
in Homework 4 if you need refresher directions in how to do this.
2. Merge and Center cells A22 and B22 and type the words Unavailability/Downtime in them. Type the
number of minutes in the appropriate cells in this row needed to calculate the effective capacity of
each of the following resources in (4) below.
3. Merge and Center cells A23 and B23 and type the words Effective Capacity in them. For each
resource discussed in (4) below, calculate its Effective Capacity.
4. After conducting some time-motion studies, the following results have been discovered. Calculate
the effective capacity of each of the following resources.
a. Nurses are spending 15 minutes for each patient searching for needed supplies.
b. Hospitalists are so busy on the inpatient units that they cannot discuss ED patients needing
admission with the ED physician except for about once every 40 minutes. Although this is
not hospitalist downtime, it means the hospitalist is unavailable for ED needs. This does not
affect the ED MD effective capacity, as they do other work as they are waiting to hear back
from the hospitalist.
c. The amount of additional time needed for the nurses and hospitalists means that the ED
bed is reserved for the ED patient for this additional amount of time.
d. Based on the resource unavailability in (a), (b), and (c) and your effective capacity
calculation, write a brief 2-3 sentence summary of the findings of your analytic results that
you will present to the quality improvement team. Insert a textbox into the worksheet to
write your summary.
©Sandra Potthoff, PhD 2021
“Capacity Analysis”
Page 2
UCLA HLTADM 413 Operations Management in Healthcare
Question 2: Operating Room (OR) Capacity
Your hospital’s surgical services department has 8 Operating Rooms. The Operating Rooms are currently staffed
from 7 am to 3 pm. Demand for surgical services results in an average of 2 surgeries done per room per day,
with each surgical procedure (excluding setup and cleanup time) lasting on average 2.5 hours. Before each
surgery, an OR must be set up, which takes on average 30 minutes, making it unavailable to start the surgery
until set up is complete. After each surgery, an OR must be cleaned, again, taking on average 30 minutes,
making it unavailable for set up for the next surgery until cleanup has been complete. Setup and cleanup are
conducted by the OR staff, so they are available and working during setup and cleanup times. Set up for the
next day’s surgical procedures cannot be done the day before – thus, although the staff arrives at 7 am, they
must spend their first half hour of work setting up the ORs for that day’s first surgical procedure in each
room. In addition, each room’s staff takes a ½ hour break sometime during the 8 hour shift.
Thus, there are 2 resources in the surgical services department: the ORs and the staff. Complete the following
daily capacity questions for the surgical services department in the Homework 5 Excel file worksheet called
Question 2 ORs. Be sure your answers show formulas referring to cells you have set up with the input data (so,
set it up as a model). Calculations with numbers hardwired into the answers will not receive credit even if you
have the right answer.
a. Assuming the ORs could be open 24 hours a day, the theoretical capacity of the hospital’s ORs is:
________ surgical procedures (answer for the 8 ORs, not an individual OR)
b. Assuming the current 8 hours of staff per day per OR, the theoretical capacity of the hospital’s ORs is:
________ surgical procedures (answer for the 8 ORs, not an individual OR)
Answer the remainder also assuming 8 hours per day.
c. The effective capacity of the hospital’s ORs is: ________ surgical procedures (answer for the 8 ORs, not an
individual OR)
d. The current throughput of the hospital’s ORs is: ________ surgical procedures (answer for the 8 ORs, not
an individual OR)
e. Assuming the current 8 hours of staff per day per OR, the theoretical capacity of the hospital’s OR staffing
is: ________ surgical procedures (answer for the 8 ORs’ staffing, not an individual OR’s staffing)
f. Assuming the current 8 hours of staff per day per OR, the effective capacity of the hospital’s OR staffing is:
________ surgical procedures (answer for the 8 ORs’ staffing, not an individual OR’s staffing)
g. Assuming the current 8 hours of staff per day per OR, the current throughput of the hospital’s OR staffing
is: ________ surgical procedures (answer for the 8 ORs’ staffing, not an individual OR’s staffing)
h. Suppose both the setup and cleanup time could be reduced from 30 minutes each to 15 minutes
each. The new effective capacity of the ORs would be: : ________ surgical procedures (answer for the 8
ORs, not an individual OR)
©Sandra Potthoff, PhD 2021
“Capacity Analysis”
Page 3
UCLA HLTADM 413 Operations Management in Healthcare
©Sandra Potthoff, PhD 2021
“Capacity Analysis”
Page 4
UCLA HLTADM 413 Operations Management in Healthcare
Here are questions that have come up in the past.
1. We were taught to calculate the theoretical and effective capacity but I don’t recall about current
throughput.
ANSWER: Current throughput is the same as the ACTUAL throughput being achieved (slide 5 of the first
video for this module).
2. What is the staff pool size, OR unit load, etc. Take a step back and think about this logically given the
information you are given.
a. Theoretical capacity for 24 hours: You have 8 ORs, and the actual procedure time of each procedure
is 2.5 hours. If the ORs are open for 24 hours, then what is the theoretical capacity of the ORs?
b. Theoretical capacity for 8 hours: You have 8 ORs, and the actual procedure time of each procedure
is 2.5 hours. If the ORs are open for 8 hours, then what is the theoretical capacity of the ORs?
The rest of the questions assume 8 hours per day:
c. Effective capacity of the ORs (the rooms not the staff): Each procedure takes 2.5 hours, but there is
½ hour extra on each end of the procedure, so each procedure takes 3.5 hours, not the theoretical
time of 2.5 hours. (have to include clean up/set up time in effective capacity)
d. Current throughput of ORs: You have 8 ORs, and each of them is currently doing 2 procedures per
day.
e. Theoretical capacity of OR staff: You have staff for the 8 rooms, and the theoretical time of each
procedure takes 2.5 hours.
f. Effective capacity of OR staff: Staff get ½ hour break every day. So, they are not available for 8 hours
per day, but 7.5 hours per day. So, you have 8 ORS, that are staffed for 7.5 hours per day, not 8
hours per day, and each procedure takes 2.5 hours. Note that some might argue that you should
also take into account that the staff are engaging in set up and clean up work, so shouldn’t that be
included in the calculation for effective capacity of the staff? I would accept that answer, but the
way I think about it is this: try telling your staff that the time they are setting up and cleaning up OR
rooms is considered downtime for them. They would argue that they are working to get the room
clean and make it available for the next procedures. So, downtime for ROOMS is not the same as
downtime for STAFF.
g. Current throughput of staffing: You have staffing for 8 ORs, and each of room is currently doing 2
procedures per day.
h. Effective capacity when setup and clean up now taking ½ hour total, not 1 hour total. See c above
for logic of the calculation.
©Sandra Potthoff, PhD 2021
“Capacity Analysis”
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