St. Gianna Healthcare: Service Management

St. Gianna Healthcare (SGH) was a community health centre located in Kochi, in the southern state of Kerala, India, offering government-approved medical checkups and health certifications, specialist consulting services in obstetrics and gynecology, and dental care. SGH’s medical administrator was concerned about service management issues at the clinic in recent months. While there had been a recent increase in patient numbers, she was concerned about customer experience. In particular, she was trying to assess whether patient waiting times and service turnaround were satisfactory, given the dependencies SGH had on capacity, scheduling, and overall service management at the clinic, and was considering her options for improvements.

This case is suitable for use in master of business administration and executive education programs as part of operations management or service management courses. It may also be used in sessions dealing with topics such as business process analysis, service blueprinting, customer journey mapping, queueing and waiting line analysis, and business process reconfiguration. This case will help students critically analyze service operations and develop an understanding of best practices in service management. After working through the case and assignment questions, students will be able to do the following:<ul><li>Map a business process and develop the service blueprint.</li><li>Analyze, critique, and troubleshoot glitches and gaps in service systems.</li><li>Perform an analysis of waiting times by applying queueing theory.</li><li>Understand the psychology of waiting lines and the importance of managing waiting times with reference to service queues.</li><li>Perform waiting line analysis using software such as Python or R.</li><li>Evaluate various alternatives for customer service improvements on issues relating to demand and capacity management, scheduling, and service operation reconfigurations.</li></ul>

• service management
• queueing theory
• service blueprinting
• service gap model
• customer experience