Query and UPPER function

I attempted the following query in a table that had approx. 300,000 rows. All queries are performed on a HP-UX server.

Note: An index is applied to the "last_name" column.

Select FIRST_NAME,LAST_NAME,MIDDLE_NAME
From patient
Where LAST_NAME LIKE 'ANDERSON%'
and FIRST_NAME LIKE 'HAROLD%'
Order By LAST_NAME;

 The query comes back almost immediately and returns a single row.

 I then attempted the following query and used the UPPER function.

Select FIRST_NAME,LAST_NAME,MIDDLE_NAME
From patient
Where UPPER(LAST_NAME) LIKE 'ANDERSON%'
and UPPER(FIRST_NAME) LIKE 'HAROLD%'
Order By LAST_NAME;

 This query took about 6 minutes to come back. It seems to be going through all the rows and doing the comparison.

 Since I can't make the assumption that the Last/First Name is going to be all uppercase, does anyone know of a way to speed up the second query?

 thanks for any info,

         John Received on Tue Jul 02 1996 - 00:00:00 CEST