Students offer remedies for health care in Cape Town
Cindy Schwartz, WG'05
Issue date: 10/4/04 Section: News
This year's team of 24 volunteers included four alumni and one professor, providing an opportunity for students to work closely with other members of the Wharton community. The presence of several alumni who had made the trip to Cape Town with WHIVP in previous years allowed for a sense of continuity with the work of past teams, making it easier for participants this year to get their bearings and dive right into their projects from the very first day in Cape Town.
The projects focused on clinic operations, cost accounting, and teaching Microsoft Excel to clinic staff. Building on the work of previous year's WHIVP projects, the team focused on providing detailed plans for implementation of its recommendations and leaving behind tools that clinics can use to put these plans into action.
One example is the work undertaken by the cost accounting team. Previously, Dr. Toms and his managers were unable to track the costs to treat each disease, such as HIV or TB. To address this, the cost accounting team developed a system to allow the clinics to budget by disease state, as well as an automated system for ordering drugs, which will help clinics allocate drug costs to the appropriate disease.
A second project involved analyzing the operations of the Cape Town clinics to look for ways to improve their efficiency and impact. Team members on this project spent several days at clinic sites observing how they functioned, mapping the key processes, and interviewing staff members and managers. From these sessions they developed recommendations on a range of issues such as patient demand, patient throughput, staffing mix, physical layout and organizational structure. To compliment these tactics, they developed a set of tools to help senior management implement and track their progress towards the recommendations they chose to adopt.
The remaining WHIVP team members had the chance to work directly with clinic staff, teaching four types of classes on Excel, catering to different skill levels. In all, 159 clinic employees attended one or more Excel classes.
The projects focused on clinic operations, cost accounting, and teaching Microsoft Excel to clinic staff. Building on the work of previous year's WHIVP projects, the team focused on providing detailed plans for implementation of its recommendations and leaving behind tools that clinics can use to put these plans into action.
One example is the work undertaken by the cost accounting team. Previously, Dr. Toms and his managers were unable to track the costs to treat each disease, such as HIV or TB. To address this, the cost accounting team developed a system to allow the clinics to budget by disease state, as well as an automated system for ordering drugs, which will help clinics allocate drug costs to the appropriate disease.
A second project involved analyzing the operations of the Cape Town clinics to look for ways to improve their efficiency and impact. Team members on this project spent several days at clinic sites observing how they functioned, mapping the key processes, and interviewing staff members and managers. From these sessions they developed recommendations on a range of issues such as patient demand, patient throughput, staffing mix, physical layout and organizational structure. To compliment these tactics, they developed a set of tools to help senior management implement and track their progress towards the recommendations they chose to adopt.
The remaining WHIVP team members had the chance to work directly with clinic staff, teaching four types of classes on Excel, catering to different skill levels. In all, 159 clinic employees attended one or more Excel classes.