Question

Give an example of a hospital and their strategic plan development process and how do they implement it to achieve results

Answer 1

Strategic planning is described as a process wherein the strategic facilitator or manager makes choices of certain set of strategies to enable an organization to achieve improved and better desirable outcome.

Strategies implies to a framework of plans or methods. To aim for better outcome of an organization, strategic planning helps in step wise methods to meet the desirable change which was visioned by an institution.

Strategic planning for a hospital can be done to implement ta new process or evaluate and reform the existing process for better hospital outcome. There are various steps used for strategic planning.

1. Determine organizational readiness - the hospital that is proposing for the strategic planning should have clear readiness from the organization and it's authority eg. Owner, CEO to undergo and support the whole strategic planning and it's outcome.

2. Determine the existing position : inputs can be attained from various agents such as external environment eg. Social, legal, political, technology, changing laws etc that affect the working of the organization. Internal environment includes criteria such as financial and human resources, existing operating strategies, outcome of organization until present day

3.development of strategies - at this phase a committee should be led under the leadership of a strategy facilitator who is overall accountable for the implementation of new strategies.To have clarity about the reform and hence vision statement, mission statement, long term strategic goals, annual goals, department goals and individual goals should be specified. An inter departmental relationship should be flourished so as to effectively implement the strategies till grass root level.

Perform gap analysis - it involves comparison of data within the organization and outside the organization to evaluate the gap between the present and visioned state of the organization

Identification of main issues and concern should be evaluated by using various tool such as SWOT analysis. Make strategies or long term goals which contribute to formation of mission statement.

Design action plan that marks the goals and identifies the objective and works on yearly basis.

4. Implementation of strategic plans - plans that is decided by the facilitator which will be put into action and continuously effectiveness of the plan will be evaluated.

5. Evaluation of plan - evaluation can be done in form of quality check, quarterly reports, financial growth and improved healthcare facilities leading to desired healthcare outcomes. Goals should be reveiwed and updated yearly. In this way a new process or updating a strategy will be implemented effectively.