Question

How would you develop a S.M.A.R.T goals for a hospital which is memorial Sloane Kettering that wants to redesign their approach on transportation, for patients and families to and from the hospital, by May 2019? S.M.A.R.T stands for specific, measurable, attainable, relevant and time- bound. They want to make transportation free and accessible for their patients which includes flights, trains, hotel, trains and buses. How can the smart technique be used to redesign the approach?

Answer 1

Setting a goal or objective to accomplish something, is driven by the slurry of measures which ensures that objectives and goals are attained in a definite time frame. One of the systematic approaches to accomplish this is to follow the S.M.A.R.T. goals i.e. goals which are specific, measurable, very much attainable, and relevant and also its time bound.

For hospital memorial Sloane Kettering, designing a plan to arrange the transportation for its potential patients and their families, to and fro from the hospital, SMART goal planning can be performed as below-

Identifying the transport partners- Assigning the transport partners and funding mechanism would be the first line of action which should be very specific and to the point.

Setting the timeline to devise the online system for collaboration- Once, partners are identified, making an in-house online portal to invite for bidding and making a transparent system would be the next set of action. To make it happen, a certain time line such as June 2018 can be fixed which is almost a year prior to the plan rollout date.

Initiating the dry run with the onboard partners- Once potential partners are identified and all are onboard, then dry run should be conducted to understand the possible issues and challenges which may come to the fore once the plan is rolled out for patients and their families.

Addressing the possible issues – during the simulation, if any major issues are highlighted, then it should be tackled with utmost priority which would ensure that all the problems are fixed in a stipulated time frame and final plan is rolled out in May 2019, as planned earlier.