BUS100: Question1 The COVID19 Pandemic has put Tremendous Strains on the Healthcare Systems of Countries: Business Skills and Management Assignment, SUSS, Singapore

Question 1

The COVID19 pandemic has put tremendous strains on the healthcare systems of countries all over the world. The high infection rate coupled with a low recovery rate means that the active patient population grows rapidly. This is despite the efforts of social distancing measures such as circuit breaker (CB) and movement control orders (MCO) to “flatten” the infection curve. Thus, the local Health Ministry has been working hard with the rest of the Government to expand physical facilities and medical equipment. However, it is not so easy to increase the number of healthcare professionals in such a short period of time.

The Health Ministry is now planning to add another tier of healthcare assistants. The Ministry has creatively named them “health buddies” to supplement the existing healthcare workforce. These health buddies will report to nurses and will be tasked with simple activities like monitoring readings, talking, and attending to the basic needs of patients. For such activities, the buddies can be rapidly trained in a day or two and deployed to the hospitals and isolation centers. The entry requirement is 3 GCE O Level passes with a credit in English Language. The system of “health buddies” can provide essential service and employment opportunities to thousands of people who have lost their jobs as a result of the pandemic.

To implement this system, the Ministry has put up a tender for “health buddies” to rapidly recruit them. This tender will be closed in 3 days. The tender includes Table 1 to help manpower and recruitment agencies understand where and how these health buddies will be deployed.

The tender includes a clarification section to explain the Table. Patient Population refers to the total number of patients under the care of the hospitals on any given day. This includes new and existing cases, all of which require hospitalization. Thus, after a patient is discharged, he will not be counted in the patient population.

On any given day, 86% of the total patient population are moderate cases, 10% serious cases and 4% require ICU services. Additionally, on each day, 60% of patients are elderly Seniors, 30% are Active Working Adults and 10% are Young patients. Depending on the medical types, patients in different age-groups require a different amount of time to care for. For example, EACH Senior patient will require 240 minutes per day for a moderate case, 480 minutes for a serious case, and 720 minutes for an ICU case. Each day is simply a 24-hour period. It is evident that the resources of the hospitals can easily be overwhelmed in the pandemic if the population of patients is not contained.

The “health buddies” will work 8 hours a day but maybe rostered to work in different shifts over 24 hours 7 days a week, just like the regular healthcare workers. The Ministry has set aside a 12% allowance factor for short rests, toilet breaks, and simple administrative chores. This means that 88% of the time is for patient-care duties.

Table 2 (below) in the tender document shows the expected COVID19 patient population size that must be cared for by the “health buddies”. Day 0 is to be the first day at work, which is just 6 weeks after the tender was closed. The Ministry will be responsible for paying salaries, providing other compensation benefits, and adhering to the relevant labor laws. The successful tenderer will only be responsible for the initial mass recruitment.

All tenderers will need to quote a “per head recruitment price”. In addition, they must show how many “health buddies” will need to be recruited based on the range of the estimated patient population size shown in Table 2.

Note that the responsibility of the tenderer is to help in sourcing the “health buddies” and to assist in the recruitment process only. Once the “health buddies” are found suitable, the Ministry will hire them directly as employees. The number of “health buddies” to be recruited depends on the patient population size and the service needs indicated in Table 1. Upon award of the tender, the Ministry will finalize the patient population size and the tenderer is responsible for recruiting the corresponding number of “health buddies”.

Talent Finder Pte Ltd is a manpower agency founded by Terry Tan and it has been in business for more than 10 years. It has established a name for itself as an effective and highly competitive agency. In the past, it has helped to recruit migrant workers and local executives for a plethora of industries from construction to F&B, administrative services to even manufacturing. Its recruitment consultants are highly resourceful, creative, and sharp in identifying good candidates.

Terry is excited by this new mass recruitment tender as it provides an opportunity for him to scale up his business. He has already gotten his accounting department to compile Table 3 which shows the internal recruitment cost based on the number of candidates to be sourced for each exercise. As a veteran in the business, he can already discern economies of scale as well as the law of diminishing returns reflected in the costing

Imagine you are a senior executive working for Talent Finder. How will you advise Terry in responding to the “buddies tender”?

a. Construct a model to compute the number of “health buddies” to be hired based on the number of patient population. How many “health buddies” will be needed if the patient population is 50,000? What would be the expected profit if Talent Finder should quote a price of $130 per head based on a patient population size of 50,000? (Note: expand your model as needed).

b. Create a data table to analyze how profit will change based on the prices of $60, $90, $130, $170, $200, and the estimated patient population size shown in Table 2 above. Apply single-color graded conditional formatting to the profit table. To meet tender requirements, create another data table to show how many “health buddies” will be needed for the various patient population sizes quoted by the Health Ministry. What is the maximum profit? What is the minimum profit? Apply conditional formatting to highlight the cell with maximum profit in yellow, and the cell with minimum profit in pink.

c. Interpret your profit table. How would you advise Terry to quote for the tender? Explain the reasons for your answer.