Yesterday the healthcare students participated in an internal case competition. We have a competitive team that travels to case competitions to compete, but the program also holds an internal competition for those students who are not on the competitive team.
Last year we all watched the students in the class above us take part in the internal case competition and this year it was our turn! We were given the case about a month in advance, but the majority of us hadn’t looked at the case until about two weeks beforehand. My group met and divided up some preliminary work for the weekend before the competition and we quickly realized how much work there was to be done!
The case required that we give a recommendation to a healthcare system about opening up urgent cares. To do this we had to do a financial analysis of whether or not the project would be feasible and from there recommend locations for the urgent cares, how many we would choose to open, and what the model of care would actually look like. I have to admit that I am truthfully not the best with financials, especially with such limited data, so I was lucky to have a team with great members to utilize all of our strengths.
The day of the competition the three teams all met and were prepared to present. The judges consisted of several administrators from a local healthcare organization. It was great being able to see how well all of the teams came together and to see what ideas our presentations had in common and which differed. It was a ton of work and I think we’re all glad it’s over, but it was still an interesting learning process!!