Founded over 60 years ago, Gertrude’s Garden Children’s Hospital’s is a leading health care provider for East African children.

In 2008, Gertrude’s sought to increase its reach to underserved children by developing a feasible business plan for satellite clinics. Through field visits to satellite clinics and interviews with clinic staff and administrators, an MIT student team developed four major opportunities for incremental revenue increases—a lab and pharmacy referral program, an increase in capacity or hours during peak times, a space rental service for local health groups, and an expansion of their clinical training program—and proposed ways these opportunities could be used to expand healthcare access to the poorest patients. Gertrude’s began implementing some of student recommendations immediately; others followed slowly due to staffing constraints. It eventually discovered that the plan for scaling up services to lower-income segments would require further refinement. , but found clear benefits in separating day-to-day clinic operations from the work of the hospital’s associated foundation.

 

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Gertrude’s Garden Children’s Hospital

Video: Final student presentation: Gertrude’s Garden Children’s Hospital