Medical centre budgets
Dr Schultz is the head doctor and manager at the Okavango Medical Center, Botswana. This medical centre is located eight hours away from the capital city, Gaborone. The medical centre is able to cope with routine cases, but when the doctors at the centre encounter an unusual case they have to communicate with specialists at the main hospital in Gaborone using either a
telephone or voice over internet protocol (VOIP). Currently the Okavango Medical Center does not have any medical equipment connected to the IT systems at the hospital in Gaborone in real time. When there are unexpected changes in a patient’s condition, this makes it hard to give the necessary information to specialists in Gaborone. Because of this, at times Dr Schultz has to ask a specialist doctor from Gaborone to come to Okavango Medical Center to carry out treatment. The area is becoming popular with tourists, and Dr Schultz is concerned that the doctors and nurses at Okavango Medical Center will be unable to treat the increasing number of patients. He believes Okavango Medical Center needs better equipment in order to improve patient care. Dr Schultz created a spreadsheet of the treatments carried out by the centre over a week.
A small part of the spreadsheet is shown below in Figure 1.
Figure 1: Part of Dr Schultz’s treatment record spreadsheet