As hospitals and health systems race to acquire large physician practices in an offensive or defensive market strategy, hospital administrators and business development teams often view the transaction closing date as the finish line. Prudent health care leaders recognize that to capitalize on the significant practice investment, a comprehensive integration strategy, from pre-due diligence through […]
Veralon Views Blog
The Veralon Views blog is an extension of our partnership with leaders who are transforming the healthcare industry. Here, we share expert perspectives from our nationally recognized senior consulting team on issues that are key to the success of your organization.
We recently received the following question from an attendee during our ACHE Cluster session, Strategic Planning from Formulation to Action, in Marco Island: What makes for a successful strategic plan update? Once a strategic plan has been completed, it needs to be updated on a consistent (at least annual) basis. This allows for the plan […]
Future uncertainty of the health care environment is creating unprecedented challenges for health care organizations. To manage risk in uncertain times, scenario planning, which helps organizations adapt more successfully to unexpected future conditions, is an effective tool to incorporate into the strategic planning process. There are two potential approaches to incorporate scenario planning into the […]
A complete strategic plan will always include an external assessment. The external assessment should examine the organization’s historical performance as it relates to its respective marketplace, including analysis of the market’s historical performance as well as anticipated future trends and forecasts. The external assessment has five main components: 1. Review of demographic, economic, and health […]
For organizations to insert creativity, intuition, a future orientation, and new perspectives into its strategic planning process, strategic thinking is required. It is the type of thinking that attempts to determine what an organization should look like in the future. Strategic thinkers ask questions such as: “What are we doing now that we should stop […]
Participation and collaboration are not only ideal in any strategic planning process, they are essential. In previous posts, we’ve discussed the importance of having a variety of stakeholders throughout your organization participate in the strategic planning process to gain buy-in for the final plan. Just as important in knowing who to have participate, is knowing […]
Consider this common position of a strategic planning leader: During the course of the interview process for a strategic plan, a key physician leader notes his discontent with current OR operations, specifically turnaround time; He wants to know how this issue will be improved as a result of the planning process. What is the best […]
One effective way to involve a large stakeholder group in the strategic planning process is through a leadership retreat. A retreat can be an opportunity to kick off the process, gather feedback, or transition to implementation. Additionally, annual retreats are an effective way to update your strategic plan throughout the current planning horizon. To […]
An important component of any strategic plan is an accurate internal assessment of the organization. It combines data analysis with qualitative information and analysis to formulate an accurate profile of the historical performance. Along with the external assessment, it establishes the organization’s strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats (SWOT) and identifies competitive advantages and disadvantages that […]
There are multiple factors to consider when building a strategic plan; competition, quality and care experience, culture, and market and industry innovation, are just a few of the most critical components. It is often said that sound strategy development is both an art and a science – requiring planners to blend intuition and creative problem […]