Designing a successful healthcare business strategy can be notoriously

complex.

Private organizations must balance costs and revenues with the desire to
provide excellent care and the best professional medical/research teams
on the market. Managing financials for growth and profitability while also
investing in first-rate talent and technology is a delicate balancing act—
especially since human lives are involved. For-profit healthcare strategies
must always remember that the patient is the top priority.

Public healthcare infrastructure must grapple with gaps in funding and

overregulation that may limit innovation or dictate the strategic initiatives
that can or can’t be implemented. All the while, the political pendulum
makes future years even less predictable than in private healthcare. But
you’ve got to work with the cards you’re given.

The eight ideas below can complement a sound business strategy in

healthcare by addressing key areas such as employee engagement, cost
reductions, leadership, and physician referrals.

Employee Engagement Strategy: Identify Opposing

Mindsets and Give a Voice to the Front Line

Declining healthcare employee engagement has put the healthcare

industry under intense pressure to find productivity solutions and cultural
motivators. Salaries, wages, and benefits are often a healthcare
organization’s most significant expenses, but still, the industry continues to
report engagement at a low level (only 44% of the U.S. hospital
workforce overall is highly engaged, for example).

MedStar Health, a large healthcare organization with 10 hospitals and 100+

clinics and offices in the Maryland and D.C. area, is fighting this trend.
They’ve invested significant resources into “soft skills” training for
leadership to help provide consistent cultural shifts that motivate
employees to buy in.

Here’s another possible example of a soft skill strategy to help: At your next
meeting regarding a patient experience initiative, ask the assembled team,
“What beliefs do you have that could prevent this from succeeding?” Give
the night shift nurses, techs, custodial staff, and other critical front-line
stakeholders in the room a safe forum to voice their opinions. By learning
about their beliefs and mindsets, allowing them to weigh in, and addressing
those needs in the plan, you’re more likely to affect a consistent and lasting
change.

Also, consider making the goal-setting process collaborative and intuitive

with well-integrated software linking employee evaluation to top tier
business strategy.

Cost Reduction Strategy: Increase

Wellness/Prevention Resources

Food is the number one cause of poor health in America, with dietary
habits causing an estimated 700,000 deaths each year from heart disease,
diabetes, immune function, and more. And yet, federal research spending
only devotes about $1.5 billion on nutrition, compared to about $60 billion
on drugs, biotech, and medical devices.

To save costs in healthcare, try to focus on a strategy of reducing the

primary drivers of poor health. Increase the resources you devote to
wellness, nutrition, and prevention initiatives/education for patients. PwC
Health Research Institute reported in 2016 that patients want advice on
weight management and diet therapies. Fitness and smoking cessation
programs, among others, are a powerful strategy for long-term cost
reduction in healthcare.

Patient Satisfaction Strategy: Audit Front Desk

Processes
Your front desk is often both your first and last point of contact, which
means it is a critical part of reaching your potential patient satisfaction in
healthcare. Follow-up calls after appointments can go a long way to
improving the patient experience in hospitals, building positive
relationships, and encouraging word-of-mouth referrals.

Consider these elements as you audit your front desk process:

 Training time for staff

 Length of phone hold times
 Any evidence of patient confusion/misinformation points
 Calls-to-action that get patients to book appointments
 Reminder calls and emails for follow-up appointments
  Speed of scheduling system
 Personal touches (e.g., birthday cards, asking about their families)

Leadership Strategy: “Double-Hat” Top Talent When

You’re Short on Leadership Prospects

In a smaller healthcare system, you might be able to rely on a strong team

of four or five “rock star” leadership executives who manage one to two
hundred employees. In most cases, a smaller team in such a setting is
more agile and likely to stay on the same page.

Larger organizations with perhaps dozens of hospitals, clinics, pharmacies,

and more require a much larger leadership umbrella. A hierarchy of
leaders takes ownership over each of the discrete elements in the system.
While it’s best to have a terrific person in every role, the reality is that you
sometimes find yourself with more leadership positions than great leaders.

Don’t shy away from “double-hatting” your top leadership talent in these
cases. An experienced Chief Information Officer (CIO) with incredible
discipline and drive may be well-suited to also act as the Chief Risk Officer
(CRO). Rather than rely upon two less-than-stellar leaders managing each
department separately, you’d have a versatile individual with great potential
overseeing both until another worthy leader arrives in your system.

Marketing Strategy: Optimize the Online Patient

Experience
Today’s healthcare environment demands a responsive website that
adjusts to a variety of devices and has a consistently impressive and
intuitive first impression. As a result, it’s crucial that your online patient
experience has the pieces in place to prevent patients from leaving and
looking for another practice where the website is easier to understand (or
quicker to get them to the information they need).

As you perform an audit of your online patient experience, don’t forget

about these necessities:

 Optimize for mobile

 Test the load speeds on each page
 Devote time to SEO (Search Engine Optimization)
 Backlink to main pages to keep patients on the site
 Make sure the user can navigate to what they want in only a few
seconds/clicks
 Write copy and use images that resonate with and represent your
target patients
 While you’re working on digital strategy, gather healthcare marketing
ideas for a catchy online campaign

Referral Strategy: Hire a Physician Liaison

A consistently top strategy for organically bringing in new patients is

through doctor referrals. The front desk staff in a healthcare setting is too
often asked to network with the doctors you’re hoping will refer your
practice. There is simply too much outreach, phone triaging, information
management, data entry, and record keeping in the front desk’s day-to-day
for them to properly focus on this important initiative.

A full-time physician liaison can maximize your potential by doctor referrals.

You can best maintain positive contact with your top referral sources by
having one individual whose sole duty each day is to meet with (or go out
to eat with) prospective referral bases and travel between hospitals and
outpatient offices. Have your physician liaison schedule a steady flow of
visits, calls, and meetings that will fuel clearly defined quarterly goals to
show referral growth.

Topics: Healthcare Business Strategy

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anaging a hospital is challenging work, and crafting an effective strategic
plan for one is even more formidable in our uncertain economic and
political climate. Since the ACA passed in 2010, healthcare access has
expanded, hospitals have grown more complex and specialized in their
internal departments, more medical providers have transitioned into
hospitals, and insurance companies have more leverage than ever to
negotiate prices with the larger pool of insured persons.

In healthcare, we pledge first to “do no harm,” so don’t risk harm to your

organization by conducting a hospital management strategy burdened with
uncertainty, miscommunication, and an amorphous vision. Here are 5 best
practices for strategic planning in hospital management:

1. Let the Process Lead

A strategic plan should manage your resources efficiently by funneling

them smoothly from big ideas to daily actions. There is a natural flow to
strategic plan anatomy:

 Mission, vision, and values rarely change—they are constant and

foundational touchstones for the overall direction of your hospital.

 Objectives are set (and reviewed/revised from time to time) to move

you closer to the broad aspirations of your vision statement in
smaller, more realistic 3-5 year targets.

 Strategies are established next, to pursue the goals you’ve set

through concretely actionable projects and initiatives.

 Measures must finally be selected to track progress toward your

objectives and identify whether the strategies you’ve implemented are
having their intended impact or need to be changed.

Adhering to this hierarchical cascade helps your hospital avoid drifting

away from its vision and mission, but leaves you agile enough to adapt and
change strategies in an uncertain future.

2. Plan in the Open

Include your entire staff in the development and implementation of action
plans to give them a sense of ownership and keep them engaged in the big
picture.

Too many hospitals make the mistake of keeping strategy at the top level,
but when you communicate goals and rationale clearly with the people who
actually have to carry out the strategic plan, you’ll improve that plan’s
efficiency and overall chance of success.

3. Set Realistic Goals

If you hope to achieve real improvements in your hospital, then you need to
avoid goals with outlandish financial requirements and grandiose
transformations. Impractical goals will stifle your organization’s progress,
but attainable ones can inspire you by producing measurable results that
will fuel future progress and more advanced goals.
You’ll know if your goals are actually feasible if you’re able to develop finite,
viable, and realistic strategies and projects that can facilitate the successful
deployment of those goals.

4. Narrow Your Focus

Setting too many disparate goals can dilute your resources, confuse your
management team, and fragment your efforts into ineffective half-
measures.

Keep it simple, stick to the top five or six changes you want to see, and
then reallocate time and effort as the needs of each goal progress and
evolve. Done effectively, this will allow you to snowball your resources as
some of the targets are reached and others receive increased focus. Less
is truly more when setting goals.

5. Don’t Drown Yourself In Numbers

Too many statistics and performance metrics can needlessly confuse your
management team and create conflicts in your assessment of goals and
strategies. Stick to relatively few, high-impact, SMART (Specific,
Measurable, Attainable, Relevant, Time-bound) KPIs that are each
linked directly to a goal of your organization. This means making sure that
the objective measures you track have obvious links to the results you want
to realize in the hospital.
 Well-designed measures can help you decide whether your strategies are
producing the results you need or if your approach needs to change. Most
strategic planning goals only need one or two KPIs to accurately measure
progress towards objectives. Frequency of assessment can also vary by
KPI. For example, short-term goals tend to require more frequent tracking
(perhaps monthly), whereas long-term goals might be reviewed less often
(quarterly).

With these guiding principles and other best practices in hospital

management, strategic planning in healthcare can be both straightforward
and impactful. A vigilant, proactive approach to improving your hospital’s
strategic planning process can head off potential pitfalls in your objectives
and execution before they arise.
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 CONTENT STRATEGY

Stand Out From Your Healthcare

Competitors With Service Line Competitive
Analysis
Follow these tips to understand your local
competitive landscape and optimize your
online content — so patients choose you
instead of the organization down the street or
a county over.
To position your brand as the best choice for care, you
have to know where you stand in your market.
Boost your service line performance and accomplish goals like
increasing brand awareness and patient volume when you dig into
your competitors’ websites, service line by service line.

Take an Iterative Approach

Good healthcare marketing is a marathon, not a sprint. That’s why
we recommend analyzing your competition from a service line
perspective, as well as an overall organizational perspective. But
which department or service line would most benefit from
competitive analysis? Start with the service lines that are a primary
focus for your organization as part of your strategic plan. If there are
too many to choose from, or your organization hasn’t identified
priorities, ask yourself the following:

 Which service lines generate the most revenue?

 Arethere service lines with strong or increasing competition in
your area?
  Is there a service line that’s grown in the last few years or has
future opportunities to grow? Or a service line that seems to
be losing business?
Once you’ve determined the service line(s) you think would most
benefit from strategic competitive analysis, you’ll enter into a
research and discovery phase.

Research & Discovery Step 1: Who Are Your

Competitors?
Your departments usually have different competitors than your
organization at-large. When conducting competitive analyses,
research the healthcare organizations in your town, county, state, or
region—and remember that patients may be motivated to travel
farther for certain types of specialized care. Compile a list of the
organizations you intend to analyze who present current or potential
threats to your organization’s services.

Research & Discovery Step 2: Interview Stakeholders

Your departmental leaders have nuanced knowledge about the
services you offer, how your patients and community view your
organization, and the competitive landscape in your area. Ask them:

 When patients don’t see you for care, where do they go? Confirm
the list you created of competitors in your region from Step
1. In context of your service line, what do they do well, and
what are their weaknesses? How do your different
competitors potentially threaten your business?
 What’s different and unique about your care? How do the
services you offer or your team’s approach to care differ?
 What’s the one thing you want your patients to tell others about
your team’s care? Do patients and their families see you as
the community hospital offering one-on-one attention, the
academic research center with cutting-edge technology, or
the one-stop-shop for primary and specialty care? Think
about your strengths and how they support your brand.
 Who is your typical patient? Describe their demographics,
preferences, and interests, and what you know they like most
about your services.
Research & Discovery Step 3: Understand Your Target
Audience
Knowing your audience—who they are, what they care about, their
common questions—is critical to writing helpful, engaging service
line content and setting yourself apart from your competitors.

Gather what you know about the target audience(s) of your service
line, and consider if they have specific preferences for their care. If
possible, interview current or past patients of the department, or
review their patient feedback.

Ask what’s most important to them when it comes to researching

and choosing care, what attracted them to your organization, and
what they most liked or disliked about their experience.

Analyzing Your Competitors’ Online Presence

After you’ve gotten your arms around your stakeholder feedback
and patients’ needs, it’s time to analyze your competitors’ websites.
Research and record answers to the following questions. (Don’t
forget to analyze your own organization, too!)

 Is the content easy to read and understand? Or does it have

complex sentences, medical jargon, and undefined
acronyms? What grade reading level is it written at?
 Is the content personalized to the user, focusing on their needs
and how they benefit from getting care? Or is the content
written in an organization-focused way?
 Is the content sensitive and empathetic to the patient’s
experience, or is it judgmental and overly negative?
 It the section intuitively easy to navigate? Is the content
organized in a way that follows the typical patient journey?
 Is the section mobile-friendly? In 2019, 51% of time spent
online is now spent on a mobile device.
 Does each page have accurate and user-friendly metadata?
Are relevant keywords used naturally in the copy to support
SEO?
 Are there clear, relevant calls-to-action on every page? Or is
the next step unclear?
 the website accessible? Does the site offer an equal experience
 Is
to people who have a disability, or does it not comply with
federal guidelines?
Beyond your competitor’s website, what other strategies are your
competitors using to reach your market?

Once you’ve pinpointed your competitors’ website weaknesses and

strengths, compare them to yours. Give your users the better online
experience, and they’ll reward you with increased online traffic and
conversions. If your service line is lacking in any of the above
categories, get help from Geonetric to improve your website and get
results.

Identify Your Differentiators

Weave what makes your organization the best choice for care into
your copy where relevant. That means:

 Answering common patient concerns/questions in a way that

positions your organization as the best choice for care
 Highlighting any unique services, treatments, or programs, or
advanced technology and equipment
 Explaining your staff’s approach to care, noting any special
staff certifications, educational attainments, or roles
 Listing service line department and staff awards and
accreditations, explaining them in context of how patients
benefit
For example, if you’re focusing on your maternity service line and
you know your target audience is made up of women with diverse
preferences for their birth experience, use language that makes it
clear your staff respect the patient’s preferences and birth plan, and
that you offer a wide range of amenities and services to suit
different personal choices.

Spin Your “Weaknesses” into Strengths

Put a positive spin on the differences between you and your
competitors. For example, if you’re a smaller community hospital
competing with a behemoth health system, your content can
highlight the personalized nature of your care, describing how your
friendly, skilled staff treat patients and their loved ones like family.
Stress how much easier it is to get same-day care once you’re an
established patient. As long as it still accurately describes what it’s
like to get care at your organization, there’s a way to top your
competitors through strategic language.

Increase Market Share

Read our other helpful tips for conducting digital competitive analyses,
or contact Geonetric today if you’re ready to increase your market
share by enhancing the performance of your service line content.
We offer a wide range of options to meet the unique needs of
hospitals and health systems across the U.S.
Topics: Healthcare Strategic Planning

Environmental impact matrix (micro environment)

Dimensions Factors Impact of factors
Customer, More inclination towards Increased costs, higher quality services,
public and using luxurious health services overuse of complicated expensive technologies
media More demand for high quality Higher costs, human resources, expensive
health services equipment
Increase in average income Increase in hospital income
Increase in purchasing power Increase in hospital income
Education level and health Decrease in hospitalization period and increase
literacy improvement of bed turnover rate
Organic and green products Decrease in diseases and demand for health
attitude services which will lead to quality
improvement in public hospitals
Dimensions Factors Impact of factors
Increase in hospital expenses for healthy waste
Environment protection and
disposal and use of latest technologies with
green energy use attitude
green energy
Increase in people’s share in
Increase in hospital specific income
health services payments
Longer patient wait times leading to disorder
Unfair bed distribution
and lower quality of services
Distributors
Unfair specialized human Longer patient wait times and non-
resources distribution responsiveness
Increase in prescription of
Inability to supply drugs and lower quality of
drugs out of Iranian official
services
list of drugs
Increase in the number of Patients’ resistance to treatment and higher
prescriptions containing doses of drugs leading to medicine supply
antibiotics issues
Patients’ resistance to treatment and higher
Suppliers doses of drugs leading to medicine supply
Increase in the number of issues
prescriptions containing
injections
Increase in design costs and equipping
hospitals with clean rooms
Increase in the number of patients with no
Increase in the number of self-
appointments leading to longer patient wait
medication cases in patients
times
Stakeholders Hospitals being indebted and therefore unable
to supply medicine and consumer products or
purchasing low quality products that in turn
Delayed payment to hospitals
will lead to patient dissatisfaction. In addition,
by insurance companies
delay in personnel reimbursement can result in
lack of satisfaction and motivation to provide
high quality care.
Full-time status of clinical
faculty members (non-
Shorter patient wait times and more
permissibility of simultaneous
responsiveness
work in both public and
private sectors)
Freedom of speech in media, Compromised reputation of public hospitals
multiplicity of political due to myriad economic and political issues
parties, civil rights, meetings
or campaigns to support or
ban health policies (social -
Dimensions Factors Impact of factors
political)
More inclination towards Shorter wait times and improved quality of
receiving home care and services and opportunities for launching home
nursing care care
Growth in usage of health Decreased rate of referring to hospitals and
promotion software shorter wait times
Growth of clinics and private Shorter wait times in public hospitals and
hospitals improved quality of services
Important basic infrastructures Remote medical services and electronic
(facilities and installations) in medical record option
Iran and the city in which the
hospital is located
Good academic and Improved treatment processes and quality of
knowledge developments in services and patient satisfaction
Iran and the city in which the
hospital is located
A chance to make the required
Improved treatment processes and quality of
investments for research and
services and patient satisfaction
Competitors development in Iran
Good developments in high- Improved treatment processes and quality of
end technologies in hospitals services and patient satisfaction
Availability of high-end
technologies in the relative Higher hospital expenses
industry of hospitals
Available required
communication structures
Remote medical services and electronic
Good developments in medical record option
information and
communication technology
Income generation
Electronic commerce option
for hospitals
Growth of medical tourism industry
Using social media to promote
Income generation
hospital products
Open in a separate window

Table 2
Environmental impact and certainty (Macro environment-PESTLE analysis)
Aspects Factors Influence Certainty
Regional competitions −1 −3
Policy makers’ neglect of the health sector −4 −3
Centralization in the dominant attitude −4 −5
Government budget-cutting structure −5 −5
Implementation of the Family Physician Program +2 +3
Periodic changes of politicians leading to change of
−3 −5
plans of directors (political instability)
Lack of appropriate philosophy and viewpoint about
Political health and its various dimensions among political −3 −4
parties and formations
Government downsizing based on various laws,
including the 44th principle (privatization +4 +3
development)
Government financial corruption −4 −4
Unreasonable tariffs determined for hospitals products
−5 −5
and services
Political sanctions −4 −5
Economic Improved payment system structure (strategic services
purchase by insurance companies based on quality and +5 +3
price)
Improved tariff structures +4 +2
Improved drugs and consumption products purchase
+5 +3
control structure
Higher inflation in the health sector −5 −5
Higher expenses (drugs and treatment) −5 −5
Higher inflation −4 −5
Higher bank interest rates −4 −4
Improved financing structure +5 +3
Currency rate fluctuations and multiplicity of currency
−4 −5
rates
Supportive role of government financial policies +5 +2
Providing access to capital/loans to develop hospitals’
+4 +4
activities by the government
Good market economic growth +3 +1
Availability of required finances (from public +5 +2
government budget, charities, etc.) to produce
hospitals products and services
Aspects Factors Influence Certainty
Smaller budget share for the health sector −5 −5
Approved national Iranian pharmacopoeia and the
+3 +3
comprehensive list of equipment
More budget limitations for the health sector as a result −3 −3
of economic and health load of non-communicable and
emerging diseases because of environmental changes
Economic sanctions −3 −5
Higher population growth −3 −5
Higher fertility rates −3 −4
Change of diseases load towards chronic illnesses −5 −5
Lower physical activity −3 −4
Higher life expectancy −3 −4
Social and
cultural Higher poverty −4 −5
Appropriate population distribution (young human
+2 +4
resources to total population ratio)
Appropriate family size and structure +2 +3
Higher rates of social harms and anomalies, including
−3 −4
divorce, crimes, and violence.
Technology Improved health information technology (home care, +4 +2
remote medical services, remote training, electronic
medical record)
Lack of legal clarity for hospitals activities
−4 −4
development
Tax and employment laws ratified by the government −4 −4
Inappropriate budgeting system for hospitals (general −5 −4
budget, linear budget, ownership of the remaining
budget resulting from frugality)
Deficiency in health technologies evaluation (import −4 −5
Legal permits for high-end technologies and expensive
drugs)
Poor supportive laws for attracting domestic and
international investors in manufacture, equipment, and
−3 −5
renovation of hospitals (including bank laws, facilities,
loans, letters of guarantee)
The requirement for hospitals to observe scientific and +5 +2
local guidelines approved by the Ministry of Health
and insurance companies
Environmental Higher risks and diseases resulting from environment −3 −4
Aspects Factors Influence Certainty
pollution
Higher air pollution in cities in which the hospitals are
−4 −5
located
The possibility of unexpected events in the city where
−4 −3
the hospitals are located
Greater possibility of man-made disasters in the city
−3 −3
where the hospitals are located
Population positive attitude toward green energy +3 +3
Population positive attitude toward green and organic
+3 +3
products
Open in a separate window

Discussion

trategic planning in healthcare is setting long-term objectives for your

medical business and an action plan to hit your target goals. It’s about
taking a proactive approach to building a future-proof medical brand.

There are many strategies (which we’re going to look at) to achieve a
strategy-driven business model, but before we go deep into the details,
let’s check how this can benefit your practice.

The benefit of strategic planning

in healthcare
With a good strategic approach comes great advantages for your medical
business.

1) It protect your medical business from

unforeseen risks
With the Covid-19 situation, healthcare providers no longer can afford to
function reactively. And this is where SP (strategic planning) comes into
place. SP, by nature, is a proactive approach. It is focused on long-term
goals and future-oriented planning.

This not only immune you against any unlooked-for risks but arms you
with a well-crafted plan of what should be done in the face of
uncertainty.

The Planning Strategy should work as the shatterproof window for your
practice.

2) It speeds up your medical business growth

Having a strategy in place holds everyone involved accountable. This
means an increased commitment from your team and faster work
processes.

Furthermore, according to Parkinson’s Law, any team, when giving a

task, will fill whatever time was allocated for its completion. This not
only quickens your operational efficiency, but it also skyrockets your
work productivity and patient outcomes.

This enhanced workflow will accelerate the rate at which your medical
business grows. Resulting in a faster profit cycle.

The next graph illustrates how business growth rate correlates with
operational efficiency.
3) It creates a cohesive workplace for your
medical business

Medical businesses routinely separate functions to hierarchical levels to

achieve efficiencies, However…

These divides lead to confusion, anxiety, and distrust as employees work

at cross-purposes, taking refuge in functional silos instead of a
collaborative ecosystem.

This makes your medical staff sub-optimizing when you need all parts
working together.

Employees go about directionless, without an understanding of their role

in delivering the (non-existent) consistent experience for patients.

To combat this, putting a strategic vision for your business ensures

cohesiveness and a united workforce.

The bottom line is: the result of having a shared strategic vision is
coherence; the result of aimless workflow is wasted resources.

4) It increases your profit margin

Great medical business owners aim for the stars and land on the moon.
And this is what makes strategic financial planning great. It forces you
to aim high. This kind of planning breaks the chains of the self-limiting
beliefs that are preventing you and your staff from achieving a higher
rate of profit margins.

Not only that, but it also makes sure that what you’re doing is directed
by a strategy and measurable KPIs (key performance indicators) and not
by a mere accumulation of tactics that don’t add up together.

This results in a well-tracked process, efficient way of working, and

increased profitability.

3 Common mistakes when

implementing healthcare
strategic planning
Let’s explore common mistakes medical business fall into when
implementing strategic planning workshops.

1) Disregarding their branding efforts

Any medical practice can have strategies, but great medical businesses
let their brand act as a decisional filter for their planning effort.

Does your strategy align perfectly with your brand’s core attribute?
Does this plan solidify your place in the market or does it weaken your
brand’s perceived value? If you don’t have a grounded brand in place,
your strategy might end up hurting your medical business.

If you’d like to learn more about brand building and how can you build a
mouth-watering brand, you can check our free healthcare branding
guide .

2) Focusing on too many metrics and KPIs

Getting distracted by too many metrics is the fast lane to a crumbling
healthcare plan. Many practices try to implement a strategy but end up
focusing on the wrong metrics and getting overwhelmed.

It is best to list out critical KPIs (key performance indicators) for your
medical brand before embarking on a strategy.

3) Lack of professional facilitators

Any healthcare strategic plan needs a good facilitator. A facilitator that
has a great knowledge of the healthcare industry know-how and its
business side of things. Common trap healthcare organizations or
practices fall into is trying to implement these strategies in-house. This
leads to unproductive workshops and unfruitful results.

We strongly advise you to outsource these strategies to great facilitators

that have past-experience running healthcare strategic planning
workshops. This will save you time and provide you with the best result
for your medical business.
Best Healthcare Planning
Strategies (With Examples)
Let’s go through some of the essentials of strategic planning methods in
healthcare.

1) S.W.O.T Analysis Strategy

S.W.O.T is a strategic planning technique used to define your healthcare

organization’s (or practice’s) Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities,
and Threats in the competitive landscape.

SWOT Analysis arms you with a clear overview of critical metrics that
are key for your performance and the overall success of your medical
business.

Let’s see some examples of SWOT Diagrams in healthcare.

Hospital strategic plan: SWOT example

Strategic planning in nursing: SWOT Example

2) S.W.O.T Strategy Canvas™

SWOT Analysis is not enough to measure the success of your efforts.

That’s why our team at unnus developed the SWOT Strategy Canvas™
(SSC), a visual representation graph of the impact SWOT has on your
medical brand.

The SSC could be conducted every 6 months to track the efficiency and
the effort of SWOT.

SSC graph tracks the Impact Rate of each element of the SWOT
(strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats). The goal is to
witness a low Impact Rate of weakness and threats and a high Impact
Rate of Strengths and Opportunities.

If you’d like to know more about the how-tos and other details of SWOT
analysis and SSC, check our step-by-step guide on SWOT here .

3) Brand Vision Strategy

Brand Vision Strategy is a planning method used to define concrete

objectives for your medical brand and set up trackable metrics for the
overarching vision.

The Brand Vision Strategy has three stages:

1. 15 Year Vision Timeline

2. Brand Obituary

3. Vision Strategy Matrix

Let’s see how the three stages overlap.

#First~ The 15 Year Vision Plan

The 15 Year vision Plan is where we start defining the higher goals and
aspirations that your medical business needs to achieve.

The benefit of this stage are threefold:

 It ensures that you know where your medical business is headed

 It works as a pathway to check back against when measuring your progress

 Forces you and your team to aim high and set a bold goals

#Second~ Brand Obituary

What will happen if your practice closes its door tomorrow? Would
journalists write headlines heralding your past achievements, or would
their stories simply add you to a list of bygones? Would employees
wonder how it could have ended, or would they have known it was
inevitable? Would patients mourn your passing, or would the demise of
your medical brand go unnoticed?

Unlike the 15 Year Vision Plan, this method works as a risk assessment
and proactive approach for future commitment.
 This exercise will force you to think through some of the key elements
that make up your brand.

Here’s an example of this technique from our client, a dental practice

Confidental™.

#Third~ Brand Vision Matrix

In this stage, we get strategic by defining a set of metrics to track and

check back against your overarching vision. This stage focuses on
tracking and measuring your progress towards the final goal of the
strategy.

The metrics that we’re going to measure in this stage fall into four
categories:

1. Internal Business Process

o Some of the most important measures of internal business performance are

overall productivity rates, ability to meet deadlines on time, and ability to
achieve previously set goals and this category will contain all necessary
metrics for that.

2. Learning And Growth

o Tracking how your medical staff is growing will help facilitate the overall
team goals. You’ll want to keep track of employee morale, how
knowledgeable staff is, and how reliably they use the business’s best
practices.

3. Stakeholders
o It is critical to capture the efficiency of your stakeholders to gauge the
overall performance of your medical business. This section is focused on
staff, team, and shareholders.

4. Financial performance

o Most medical businesses find it useful to measure the business’s progress

toward financial goals. Common measures of financial performance
include revenues, return on investment, earnings, cost per case, etc.

Each category will contain the following:

1. Set of objectives that are relevant to it

2. Measurement and matrices

3. Progress Record of each target

4. Initiatives (what are we doing hit that target)

Here’s an example of a hospital’s Brand Vision Matrix:

4) Brand Cause And Effect Strategy

This strategy helps you pinpoint the root causes of complex problems
that are hindering your business growth. The premise of this strategy is
 to take on a big problem and start dissecting it into categorical
components or “sub issues”.

This way you can spot deeply-embedded issues that are causing the main
problem. You can think of this strategy as more a way to treat the
problem rather than finding it.

The benefits of this strategy are:

 Better visualization of your medical business risks

 Treating the causes rather than the symptoms of the problem

 Gets you out of the tunnel vision trap and provide you with a clear picture
of the challenges your business might face

Here’s an example for this strategic planning technique for a hospital

5) Patient Journey Strategy

The patient journey strategy (PJS) is a visual representation strategy of

your patient’s experience. It allows you to capture the path that a patient
follows when they book an appointment, sign up for a care service
membership, or otherwise interact with your medical business.
 This strategy focuses on every single touchpoint (places where patients
interact with your business) and hone in on what can be improved, fixed,
or removed.

Patients are the lifeblood of your business and zero in on your patient’s
pain points, challenges, and needs are critical for success.

Some of the benefits of using this strategy are:

 Anticipate multiple patient pathways

 Understand the patient’s perspective

 Inform your staff and employee about what should be improved

 Target patient more closely and increase personalization

 Improve patient experience

 Uncovering easy-to-overlook aspects of your business

Here’s a snapshot of a patient journey of medical practice and how the

team identified potential issues and problems

Click here for to larger version .

6) Risk Assessment Matrix Framework

The Risk Assessment Matrix creates a framework where you can assess
the urgency and the likelihood of any potential threat that might affect
your business.

This strategy also allows you to better allocate your efforts across
multiple aspects of your business based on the potential severity of any
risk. In addition, it’s a great way to visualize and prioritize where and
when should you take action against any business threats.

Risks in this framework should be ranked according to low probability

and severity (one- colored green) to the highest possible likelihood (ten-
colored red). Ranking them in this way lets your team tackle the biggest
threats with a sharp action plan.

Here’s an example of this framework:

You can access the full version here .

7) OKR (Objectives & Key Results) Framework

OKRs stands for Objectives & Key Results. An OKR framework helps
medical businesses solve their critical organizational problems. As a
framework, OKRs also help healthcare leadership teams discuss how the
work of the staff ties back to the overall business strategy.
OKRs should be transparent to everyone: top-down, bottom-up, and
cross-functional. When everyone’s looking at the same framework,
everyone has the opportunity to work toward the same outcomes.

Objectives are the vaccine to “blue sky thinking” – their goal is to help
articulate what you want to accomplish. An objective is significant,
concrete, and drives you to get tasks done.

Key results are the way you’re going to get those tasks done. Specific
and measurable, these quantitative goals act as benchmarks for how
you’ll reach objectives. (Think outcomes or results in real numbers.)

8) Brand Prioritization Framework

The Brand Prioritization Framework (BPF), or priority matrix, helps

your medical teams prioritize initiatives or service lines based on
their impact on your medical brand and the level of effort needed for
success.

With nine “buckets” or areas of interest, your team can decide if an idea
or plan is low, medium, or high effort. The team can also accordingly
decide if that plan will likely have low, medium, or high impact.

As a visual framework, the Brand Prioritization Framework helps you

promptly reach an agreement on quick wins, big projects, filler tasks, or
anything that could waste time.

An example of the BPF for might be:

You can access a large resolution here .

The ‘secret’ to a fruitful

healthcare strategic plan
A great healthcare strategy is always directed by the brand’s attributes.
A strategic plan won’t take any business anywhere if it is not guided by
your branding strategy.

A planning strategy could potentially hurt your healthcare brand equity

(your perceived worth) if it veers off from your brand’s positioning . If
you’d like to learn more about branding in healthcare and how it can
overhaul your strategic plan, you can check our guide here .