As Dr. Shouldice put it:
I’m a doctor first and an entrepreneur second. For example, we could refuse permission to
other doctors who want to visit the hospital. They may copy our technique and misapply it or
misinform their patients about the use of it. This results in failure, and we are concerned that
the technique will be blamed for the recurrences. But we’re doctors, and it is our obligation to
help other surgeons learn. On the other hand, it’s quite clear that others are trying to emulate
us. Look at this ad. [The advertisement is shown in Exhibit 4.]
This makes me believe that we should add to our capacity, either here or elsewhere. Here,
for example, we could go to Saturday operations and increase our capacity by 20% or, with an
investment of perhaps $2 million and permission from the provincial government, we could
add another floor of rooms to the hospital, expand our number of beds by 50%, and schedule
the operating rooms more heavily.
On the other hand, with government regulation being what it is, do we want to invest more
money in Toronto? Or should we establish another hospital with similar design outside
Canada? I have under consideration a couple of sites in the United States where private
hospital operations are more common. Then, too, there is the possibility that we could
diversify at other locations into other specialties offering similar opportunities such as eye
surgery, varicose veins, or hemorrhoids.
For now, I have my hands full thinking about the selection of someone to succeed Dr.
Obney when he retires. He’s 65, you know. And for good reason, he’s resisted changing certain
successful procedures that I think we could improve on. We had quite a time changing the
schedule for the administration of Demerol to patients to increase their comfort level during
the operation. Dr. Obney has opposed a Saturday operating program on the premise that he
won’t be here and won’t be able to maintain proper control.
Alan O’Dell added his own concerns:
How should we be marketing our services? Right now, we don’t. We’re even afraid to send
out this new brochure we’ve put together for fear it will generate too much demand. We know