Summary:

Organizations around the country , including hospitals, are busy developing their strategic plans for the coming year. Strategic plans used to have a five to eight year outlook, now a three year outlook is common practice. For hospital executives and boards of directors, this means that many decades of habit may be going out the window. The strategic plan is no longer a document that nobody pays attention to and gets dusted off every few years. Instead, strategy is something that needs attention every quarter.

Hospital leaders are trained to plan ahead for predictable trends—the move toward outpatient care, pressure for quality and transparency, digitizing medical records, as this author points out. However, the past year was filled with unpredictable economic and political events that have left hospitals scrambling to react.

Article Quote:

“Traditionally, the strategic plan was developed every few years by a few board members who met as the strategic planning committee. While it may still be useful to have a specific group focused on the issue, governance experts say that strategic planning shouldn’t exclude the rest of the board—everyone should be regularly thinking about the big picture and learning about the long-term effects of what’s going on today.”

Link: http://mhanewsnow.typepad.com/executive/2009/12/new-pace-of-strategic-planning.html

Strategic plans should not be something brought up only on annual board meetings. Instead, they need consistent attention and updating. For some, that means checking results every quarter; for others, daily attention is appropriate. Utilizing strategic planning technology helps bridge strategic planning and strategic execution.

For more on strategic planning, see http://www.performancesolutionstech.com/category/strategicplanning/