The cost of providing public services at a local hospital has been scrutinized by management. Although these services are used as marketing tools for the hospital, the cost and availability of scarce resources require their optimal allocation while minimizing costs.
Two popular programs being assessed for this purpose are " Family Planning "(FP) and " Health - Drive - Screenings "(HDS); their costs to the hospital for each offering are $ 200 and $ 400, respectively. The health care manager in charge of operations found three common patterns of resource consumption for each of these services and the available resources, shown in Table EX 10.2.
a. Formulate this as a linear programming problem.
b. Solve the problem graphically.
c. Solve the problem using Excel solver.
d. In a given month, how many FP and how many HDS should be offered?
e. With the proposed class offerings, how many kits will be left over (not distributed in the classes)?
f. What is the yearly cost of these two programs to the hospital?