Theme Hospital Clinic: Troubleshooting

There are a lot of things that can go wrong in Theme Hospital. Trying to avoid them happening in the first place is usually the easiest, but sometimes you just have to manage! There are quite a few common problems here, along with solutions that should get you back on the right path. 

Some of the medicine might be pretty bitter to swallow, especially when you've invested a great deal of time and effort into a level. Reading the strategy guide might also give you some idea of where things are going wrong. 

Saving your game on a fairly frequent basis (using quick save) can help, as can using the provided slots on a (bi)annual basis.

General malpractice Staff complications Room illnesses Patient fits

A staff member has been cloned, or part of a room flashes randomly between patients and staff.

There is a bug where the game gets confused about who is in the room (it occurs very rarely, usually in surgery). Symptoms: a duplicate of a doctor appears in the room but is always standing in the same place. Other random items appear in this place when the doctor is sacked and has left the hospital. Cure: restore the last saved game without this problem. 

When I restore a game saved during a bonus level I get the first level again.

This is a bug, restore from your last saved game. Do not save your game during a bonus level (using the continue feature gives the same result). 

Queues are too long, and patients are leaving.

At peak time your queues will be long anyway, place your best doctors in the key rooms that have bottlenecks. 

Add an extra room of this type to the local area to help balance the load. Redirect patients to a quieter room in another part of the hospital. 

Make sure the area is 'decorated' for the patients: a plant, fire extinguisher or two, drinks machine, and radiators. Clean up the local area by dropping in a few handymen. 

Bump unhappy patients to the front, particularly ones that are close to being cured. 

My hospital can't handle the rush at peak times...help!

You will have to redesign the hospital in some way, it might be best to do this when things have quietened down a little if it is a major change. Read the strategy section for some ideas. 

Are there patients in the queues that you don't have clinic rooms for? Kick them out of the hospital, there are already enough people bringing in the money. Patients that are easy to spot include: slack tongue, serious radiation, bloaty head, King complex, fractured bones, jellyitis, hairyitis.

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I can't pick up a staff member, a machine is in the way.

Left click on another member of the same type of staff to display the staff panel. Cycle through the staff by right clicking on the spy window until you reach the person you want. Then use the pick up button on the panel. 

A room has a doctor and machine in it, but the patients won't enter.

Try picking up the doctor and dropping him back in again. If you can't then the machine is waiting for repair. Either buy a new machine, wait for the handyman to arrive, or go find the handyman yourself. If the doctor is tired then place him in the staff room and find a replacement.

I keep on getting requests for pay increases from my staff.

Pay more attention to the staff page, you should look at it at least twice a month or more frequently if you are having boiler problems. 

Staff don't like dirty hospitals (conduct a cleanup, hire more handymen, or change their priorities), being left in a room with nothing to do (place them in the staff room or corridor), or being too hot/cold (redesign the layout of radiators). 

Staff will become unhappy as they get tired, try placing them in the staff room and see if they improve. 

If all else fails try a bonus to tide them over, or a wage increase if this doesn't fix the problem. 

A doctor in the training room isn't learning anything.

Check their tiredness level. Below about 50% they learn very little, below about 75% their rate of learning is impaired. Place them in the staff room for some rest. 

A doctor in the training room is learning more slowly than another doctor.

Each doctor learns at their own rate, some are very slow indeed. Be careful you don't promote them into consultants before they've completed a course. 

A staff member is stuck, I can't pick them up

This happens very rarely, the only solution I have found is to reload a level and redesign the room to avoid items being adjacent where staff walk in/out.

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Most people in the room are frozen in place, no patients are walking in or out.

When a doctor is too tired to perform his duty he doesn't always leave the room. Check the tiredness levels of the staff in the room and replace them. 

Check the machine status (left click on it). If the name is enclosed in brackets then a handyman has detected it needs repair and is on his way. You can't use the machine until it has been repaired. 

If a handyman is in the room walking around in a loop but unable to reach the machine then it is because a doctor is in the way. Pick up the doctor and then redesign the room at a later date. 

The patient is ready for operation in surgery, but nothing is happening.

On rare occasions this room will just stop working. It can happen because a staff member is too tired. Picking up and replacing the tired doctor usually fixes the problem. 

If neither of the doctors is tired then try picking them up in turn. When the patient gets up off the operating table and walks out replace the doctor and everything should be back to normal.

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Someone is stuck in my hospital.

This can happen under several circumstances, usually because a path out of an area has been blocked by the repositioning of an item. Move the item out of the way. 

It can also happen on the entrance or exit of a room if someone else is trying to get in. Though rare, it might be because patients like to avoid walking through each other and there are obstacles to the left and right of the exit of the room. Try picking up and moving items, kicking the patient out of the hospital, or restoring to the last saved game.

The game is very unhelpful in this respect: it doesn't tell you who is stuck! 

Patients are leaving the queues they are in, but not leaving the hospital.

Usually they are going to the nearest toilet. Make sure you have toilet facilities near common queuing areas (GP offices, a cluster of diagnosis rooms etc.). Patients will always join at the back of the queue, so make sure they get bumped to the front if they are already unhappy. 

A patient was cured but my bank balance didn't go up.

Some patients will pay with through their insurance companies, this can take up to 9 months delay before you get the readies. 

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