PLANNING

Embracing the Full Spectrum of Strategic Planning

If there’s something hospitals excel in, it’s operations — both literally and figuratively. Ask any organization about their quality initiatives or patient safety goals and they can talk for hours. But what happens when the conversation turns to long-term growth initiatives and access goals?

It’s time for the health care industry to shift from traditional operational strategic planning processes to full-spectrum strategic planning, according to Jennifer Horton, vice president of strategy at Ten Adams, a health care branding, marketing and strategy firm headquartered in Evansville, Ind.

“Most hospitals and health systems concentrate their strategic planning efforts toward internal operational needs — think quality, safety, cost and service,” Horton said. “This method ignores essential pieces of strategic planning that result in high-level growth. We should emulate businesses that successfully use strategic planning to inform everything from consumer personas to employee experiences that attract and retain high-quality talent.”

The purpose of strategic planning should be to truly focus the organization’s resources to achieve its mission and purpose. “You want to improve the lives of the people you serve,” Horton said, which might entail optimizing care of patients in the hospital or increasing access to your primary care network. However, “you need to do those things efficiently and effectively, so you are using your limited resources to impact the health of the most people.”

A Look at the Full Spectrum
Full-spectrum strategic planning includes four areas: corporate strategy, business unit strategy, functional strategy and operational strategy. When used together, they create a formidable strategy that elevates the entire organization.

Corporate strategy describes the process of high-level visioning and setting long-term direction for the health system. Horton recommends using a series of 1:1 executive meetings where senior administrators have the opportunity to vocalize their strategic imperatives, opportunities and current challenges. Topics from those meetings get whittled down into a group of three to five core areas that need to be addressed.

A follow-up meeting should then identify two or three initiatives for each of the selected core areas. These initiatives can be filtered through the organization for refinement, and a working group can be created for each initiative. But, Horton cautioned, if there are 20 focus areas, nothing is likely to get accomplished.

“Even during the COVID-19 pandemic, it is important that executives carve out the time to define the strategic priorities of the organization,” Horton said. “I find that leaders really enjoy this type of discussion because they spend so much of their time putting out fires and taking care of other issues.”

Business unit strategy can make or break the hospital’s bottom line. That’s why you include the business/service line leader, medical director, business development staff member and someone from the marketing team in this strategic planning process. 

“You want the group to define a business strategy, not a marketing strategy,” said Horton, noting that the first order of business should be role clarity. The administrative leader represents the business side and provides data and firsthand knowledge of the service line’s strengths and weaknesses. The medical director focuses on clinical care, while business development and marketing apply the information gathered to future tasks.

“Once you have role clarity, you can move into reviewing the data, the current state [of the business], the demographics of the patients, the trends and what [parts of the business you] are trying to grow,” Horton said. “Strategic planning helps you know where you are currently and where you want to go, and helps define the goals and the steps to get there.”

Business planning starts at the strategy level; for instance, strategies for the cancer service line might focus on breast cancer and community outreach about the importance of early screening. This would be followed by a planning workshop to devise a tactical plan with time lines to execute the plan.

“Once you have the business plan complete, you have a solid framework to build a marketing plan,” Horton said.

Functional strategy is the sister of business unit strategy, with input from shared service departments like human resources, information technology and marketing. Each functional area should develop a strategic plan outlining the master plan for the coming year. “What are the core objectives for the year?” Horton asked. “What are the goals you are trying to accomplish?”

Based on these objectives and goals, appropriate strategies can then be defined. However, unlike the business unit where the customer is the consumer, the typical customer for functional planning is other people within the organization. For example, marketing plans may include updating and revising the health care system’s website, hosting a community screening event, or creating an advertising campaign for orthopedics or a brand campaign for the health care system as a whole.

The Diverse Nature of Planning
Strategic planning is so much more than a yearly budget and utilization goals. It’s the opportunity to advance the future of medicine by imagining what patients will need in one, three or five years. It’s time for the senior leaders to chart a course that leads to patient, employee and business success. And, yes, it includes creating a marketing plan that supports and advances the strategic priorities.

Nowadays, with 10% to 20% employee vacancy rates at some health care organizations, having an employee engagement and experience plan is crucial. How are employees going to be recruited? How are they going to be onboarded? How is the organization going to keep its employees engaged?

Topics as important as employee retention should not be delegated down. “It needs to start with the senior leader as opposed to simply being delegated to an employee engagement committee or to human resources,” Horton said. “It has to be an organization wide plan.”

The future competitor is not necessarily another health care system, Horton added. “The future competitor may be other businesses that are getting into health care or a national practice of virtual physicians trying to work with your local hospital.

“Companies that take the time to think through each layer of full-spectrum strategic planning are better able to engage employees, improve access and drive growth over time,” Horton said.

 

This article features interviews with:

Jennifer Horton
Vice President of Strategy
Ten Adams

Image credit: istock.com/Hiraman