Since I spent a couple of evenings playing Project Hospitals, I unexpectedly picked up a few tips that seemed to make sense, and in today’s article I’d like to share them with you. Today we’re going to look at how to start a new hospital.
Explore the departments
The first thing you have to do is to look at your department. You don’t just want to look at what departments are available in your hospital (that’s too superficial). Rather you should look at what rooms you have and whether you have enough of the important ones that most patiens use.
In case you don’t have enough rooms, you should consider whether it is a specialized workplace or not. In fact, you can build one if you have a patient you want to diagnose. If you lack a conventional surgery or something that is needed to function, you want to address that right away.
In addition to surgeries/departments, you need to look at bed capacity and their availability for specific departments. If you are missing any of the points above, plan how and where you will develop what. This will come in handy at later stages.
Meet the staff
The next thing to check is the staff you currently employ. You want to make sure that you have hired people who are skilled enough and that no room is understaffed…
…you also want to look at the money your employees are currently taking in, and it’s a question of whether to lay off expensive employees outright or not.
At the same time, look to see if all employees in the same department have the same negative characteristics. It won’t be good if your department is full of people who commute (they may be late) or have children (and get tired faster).
All bad characteristics in Project Hospital:
- Unpleasant – gives a “mean staff” modifier after interacting with a patient
- 🧹 Dirty Feet – leaves dirt everywhere
- 🐢 Germophobe – washes hands three times just to be sure
- Depressed – gives a “depressed” modifier
- ☕ Hedonist – spends twice as much time enjoying their food
- ☕ Fresh parent – the level of rest decreases faster
- ⌛ Alcoholic – often show up late and with a hungover
- ⌛ Long commute – long drives from home – often late for work
- 🐢 Slow – moves much slower
- ☕ Fast Metabolism – the level of hunger increases much faster
- Slow learner – leveling skills are much slower
Emojis and their meanings:
- 🐢 >> your staff is slow, you will wait for their work
- 🧹 >> you will have higher maintenance costs
- ⌛ >> the employee may be late from time to time
- ☕ >> the employee will spend more time on breaks
See how you’re doing on your night shifts. You need to make sure you have enough people in all the wards where there are patients, and I recommend hiring a janitor. Optimally, hire people who have the night owl perk. They’ll work better. However, in my experience, nothing dramatically problematic happens at night.
Look at the budget
Once you start the game, look at how you’re doing with your budget. If you have money and a loan at the same time, pay it off. Otherwise, you’ll be paying interest and have less and less money at the end. See if there are any challenges for you that will allow you to earn money and expand your hospital.
When you focus on expansion, keep an eye on your costs. There are always several items of the same type in the game (like printers, while you can have faster ones) => with more people you have to treat (or you can just have a prescription stand), you will probably have slower treatment. Don’t despair, you can improve everything at the right time!
