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Planning is essential for a healthcare organization because it provides a clear roadmap for achieving goals, ensuring that resources are allocated efficiently and effectively. It helps organizations anticipate challenges, adapt to changes, and align efforts across teams. With a plan in place, an organization can prioritize actions, set measurable objectives, and track progress toward success. Planning fosters proactive decision making, reduces uncertainty, and allows for better risk management. There are several types of planning that are standard across all organizations, not just healthcare.
Strategic planning is a process that organizations use to define their long-term goals and develop the actions required to achieve those goals. It aligns the organization's resources and efforts toward a common vision. In healthcare, this process is critical because it helps healthcare providers, organizations, and systems deliver quality care while managing costs, improving patient outcomes, and adapting to changing regulations and market conditions. This involves understanding the current environment, identifying strengths and weaknesses, and setting clear, achievable objectives. There are six key steps in strategic planning.
The purpose of an environmental scan is to understand the internal and external factors that affect the organization’s ability to achieve its goals. It is an analysis of the current situation and market trends and current regulations. This may include analyzing strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats (SWOT analysis), which you will explore in the next tutorial.
The organization must have a clear sense of direction and purpose and must define its mission, vision, and values. The mission statement explains the organization’s purpose and primary objectives, while the vision statement describes what the organization hopes to achieve in the future. The values are the principles and beliefs that guide the organization’s actions and decisions. These statements guide decision making and organizational culture.
In healthcare, this may mean things like providing accessible, high-quality healthcare to underserved communities. A vision statement might include something like "becoming a leader in innovative patient care." Value statements may include core values like patient-centered care, integrity, and teamwork.
EXAMPLE
Mayo Clinic Health System (Mayo Clinic Health System, n.d.)In this step, the purpose is to adopt specific, measurable, achievable, relevant, and timely goals that support the mission and vision. This is where the organization focuses on where it wants to go and how it will get there.
In healthcare, goals might include improving patient outcomes, expanding services, achieving cost efficiencies, increasing patient satisfaction, or implementing new technologies (e.g., telemedicine).
EXAMPLE
A clinic might set a goal to reduce patient wait times or improve the quality of care. A hospital might set a goal to decrease post-surgical infections or to increase patient satisfaction rates.Next comes strategy development. The purpose of this step in strategic planning is to create the practical steps that will guide the organization in achieving its goals. The organization will need to identify actions and resources needed. The types of steps a healthcare organization might take to develop their strategy are things like investing in IT infrastructure, expanding patient access, improving clinical quality and safety, hiring more staff, or strengthening partnerships. These are only examples, as there is a wide variety of ways a healthcare organization can move forward to accomplish their goals.
Implementation is the next step in the strategic planning process. The purpose of this step is to put the strategy into action, ensuring resources and establishing timelines. Leaders must ensure that everyone is working toward the same goals, so communication and coordination are key at this step. All staff must understand their roles and responsibilities. In healthcare, this could involve changes in staffing, capital investment, policy adjustments, or adopting new technologies.
In the final phase of strategic planning, monitoring and evaluation are conducted to assess progress and make adjustments, if necessary. This involves tracking key performance data and outcomes. Leaders must ensure that the goals are being met and if not, make decisions about what adjustments are needed. Continuous improvement is key so that performance continues to advance over time. In healthcare, managers and leaders should be looking at data that could include patient satisfaction rates, financial performance, clinical outcomes, patient wait times, and staff turnover rates to determine strengths and weaknesses. Data-driven evaluation allows the organization to be flexible and responsive and ensure goals are being met.
Tactical planning is the process of translating broad strategic goals into specific, actionable steps and short-term objectives. While strategic planning focuses on long-term vision goals, tactical planning bridges the gap by detailing how those goals will be achieved through concrete actions over a shorter time frame, typically ranging from 1 to 3 years. It involves creating plans that are more focused and operational, concentrating on the "how" of executing strategies and ensuring that the organization moves closer to its long-term objectives.
IN CONTEXT
Tactical plans are developed by middle or lower management within an organization and often relate to specific departments, teams, or functions. For example, if a hospital’s strategic goal is to improve patient satisfaction over the next 5 years, the tactical plan might focus on immediate improvements like upgrading patient intake procedures, staff training on communication skills, or implementing new technology for faster service delivery. These tactical steps are designed to support the broader, strategic objective in a manageable, measurable way.
A key characteristic of tactical planning is its focus on efficiency and practicality. It breaks down larger goals into manageable parts, aligning the organization's resources, staff, and processes to achieve the desired outcomes. Tactical planning often involves setting specific performance targets, assigning responsibilities, establishing deadlines, and determining the resources needed to meet objectives. It also includes risk management by identifying potential obstacles and creating contingency plans to address them.
Effective tactical planning requires ongoing communication and collaboration across departments to ensure alignment with the broader organizational strategy. It is also flexible, allowing for adjustments as conditions change, such as market dynamics or unexpected challenges. As such, tactical plans should be reviewed regularly to ensure they remain relevant and effective in achieving strategic objectives.
Operational planning is the process of outlining the day-to-day activities and tasks required to implement an organization’s tactical plans and achieve its strategic objectives. Unlike strategic or tactical planning, which focuses on broader and longer-term goals, operational planning is highly detailed and short-term, typically covering a time frame of 1 year or less. It focuses on the "how" of executing specific activities on the ground, ensuring that day-to-day operations are aligned with the overall strategic direction of the organization.
Operational planning is about defining the specific actions, resources, and processes necessary to achieve predefined goals. It involves setting clear, measurable objectives and establishing clear procedures for how work will be carried out. These plans are typically created by department heads or managers responsible for the organization’s core functions, such as finance, human resources, production, or customer service. The plans ensure that everyone in the organization knows their responsibilities and the timeline for achieving their tasks, bringing efficiency and consistency across operations.
EXAMPLE
In a healthcare setting, if a tactical plan aims to improve patient throughput by reducing wait times, an operational plan might include actions like optimizing patient scheduling, increasing staff during peak hours, and deploying new technology for faster check-in processes. Each of these tasks would have specific timelines, resource allocation (e.g., staff, equipment), and performance indicators to monitor progress and success.Operational plans are often broken down into detailed elements, such as:
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REFERENCES
About Mayo Clinic Health System. Mayo Clinic Health System. (n.d.). www.mayoclinichealthsystem.org/about-us
