Background
The Healthcare One health care systems is a non-profit, independent health care organization. We are known for the highest quality of patient care. Our dedication to excellence, compassion and innovation is rooted in our corporate culture. Also, our devotion to art and science of healing will guide us towards creation of our mission and vision. By creating a clear mission and vision statements, we intend to powerfully communicate our intentions, and also to motive our team to realize its goals.
Mission and Vision
Mission
Our mission statement defines our purpose and our primary objectives. It is for internal reflection – to define key measures for our success. It main audiences are the internal stakeholder as the leadership team and the board. It is
- Excellence and leadership in delivering quality healthcare services.
- Be a leader in research so as to expand the medical knowledge.
- Continuous education of physician and other healthcare leaders.
- Responsibility for our community’s health status.
Vision
Our vision statement also defines the purpose of our healthcare organization. It reflects our values – the guiding beliefs about how we should go about doing things – rather than bottom line measures. It intends to communicate both the purpose and values of our organization.
With this in mind, we have crafted these following vision statements.
- Attract and retain the most accomplished physicians, scientists, nurses, and other healthcare professional.
- Leadership in clinical quality, service quality and values.
- Foster a culture of superb clinical and operational performance. And at the same time be compassionate and responsive care.
- Create effective programs and services of excellence that builds upon the concept of clinical innovation, biomedical research, medical education and community service.
- Be at the forefront of advances in medicine and science through a strong and ongoing commitment toward biomedical research and medical education.
Strategic Goals
We went about creating our strategic goals based on S.M.A.R.T goal criteria. To be effective, we wanted our goals to be specific, measurable, achievable, result-oriented, and time-bound. Based on our Mission and Vision, we went about creating many strategic goals. Two of the more important ones we would like to mention here,
Adaptive Strategies to Achieve Goals
Once goals have been set, the adaptive strategies provide further strategic momentum by specifying the scope of product/market expansion, contraction, or maintenance. They form the core of the strategy formulation process and are most visible to those outside the organization. Once the adaptive strategies have been selected, the directional strategies should be reevaluated. The directional strategies, which are the ends, and the adaptive strategies, which are the means, create a broader perspective so essential in strategic thinking.
The adaptive strategies can be broadly classified into; expansion; contraction; and maintenance of scope. In the context of your strategic goals, only the maintenance of scope applies in general. We will be discussing the details next. The maintenance of scope strategies can be divided into enhancement and status quo. Now, let’s take up the individual goals, and elaborate further.
Adaptive Strategy for First Goal
The first goal talks about a new patient safety and quality management protocol for physicians and the nursing staff in partnership with Patient Safety Inc. In this context, the adaptive strategy would be maintenance of scope. It would be of enhancement type, and will include a combination of all the three sub-types, which is to improve quality, efficiency, and innovation.
This type of adaptive strategy comes into play when the organization feels it needs to do better. In this context they want to improve their patient safety and quality management scores even further.
Adaptive Strategy for Second Goal
The second goal talks about new performance measurement system for managers and other leaders. Like the first goal, the applicable adaptive strategy would be of maintenance type. And a combination of all the three sub-types will be applicable. In the context of this goal, they plan to improve the performance of the organization structure and also have better strategic control.
Adaptive Strategy for Third Goal
The third goal talks about increasing inflow of international patients by 20% so as to decrease the dependence on the domestic patients. As they are attempting to better serve the current markets with current products or services, it is referred to as a market penetration strategy. This strategy is an example of Expansion of Scope adaptive strategy, and the sub-type applicable is promotion. For example, Baptist Medical Center’s response to expansion by Mayo Clinic was to capitalize on its major strength in pediatric care. Therefore, it initiated an aggressive adaptive/penetration strategy, and formed alliances to develop a regional children’s health center.
Value Chain
Healthcare organizations are considered successful if they are able to create value for the patients, physicians, and other stakeholders that rely on their service. Value is defined as the amount of satisfaction received relative to the price paid for a health care service. The health care organization value chain is composed of two primary subsystems – service delivery and support activities. The service delivery subsystem may be further divided into pre-service, point-of-service, and after-service. These three service delivery elements are where the service is delivered and includes operational processes and marketing activities. The support activities consist of organizational culture, organizational structure, and strategic resources.
Next we will elaborate on these two primary sub-systems in context of the three strategic goals.
Service Delivery
In the context of the first strategic goal, the relevant service delivery component would be clinical operations quality, which under the point-of service component. These activities, such as better patient safety and quality outcomes, convert the human and nonhuman resources into health services. Finally, actual provision of health services to the individual patient.
In the context of the second strategic goal, the relevant service delivery component would be process innovation, under the point-of-service component. These activities or the groups of activities, such an improved performance management systems, are designed specifically to improve the quality and/or quantity of health services.
In the context of the third strategic goal, which is to increase the penetration into international patient market, we plan to stress on the pre-service component such as promotion. This implies that the organization needs to promote that all the elements needed to deliver health services are available at the appropriate place at the appropriate time.
Support Activities
In the support activities, we will elaborate all the three components, as we believe all three of them will be applicable to the three strategic goals.
First and foremost is the organizational culture, which includes shared assumptions, shared values, and behavioral norms. Elaborating further, it includes overarching environment within which the health services organization operates. Also, the assumptions employees and others share in the organization regarding all aspects of service delivery. The guiding principles of the organization and its employees. The understandings people in the organization have regarding excellence, risks etc. The understandings about behavior in the organization that can create value for patients.
Next, talking about the organizational structure, it would be those aspects of the organization structure that are capable of creating value for patients. Structures based on processes or activities used by employees. These allow the major units to operate relatively autonomously subject to overarching policy guidelines. It involves two-dimensional structure where more than a single authority structure, operates simultaneously.
Lastly, it would be the strategic resources, such as financial, human, information, and technology. These are necessary for the delivery of health services; for example, financial resources are required to provide the facilities, equipment, and specialized competencies demanded by the delivery of health services. Also required are the individuals with the specialized skills and commitments to deliver health services. Other material resources required are hardware, software, and information processing systems needed to support the delivery of health services. Also the facilities and equipment required to run services and programs.
An Approach to Maintaining the Selected Adapted Strategy
We would like to elaborate further on enhancement strategies, which is a sub-category of maintenance of scope strategies under various adaptive strategies. This strategies applies to the first two strategic goals: new patient safety and quality management protocol, and the new performance improvement protocol
Here will be taking about the methods of evaluation of the adaptive strategies. Various accepted methods include: (a) SWOT analysis; (b) product life cycle (PLC) analysis; (c) Boston Consulting Group (BCG) portfolio analysis; (c) extended portfolio matrix analysis; (d) strategic position and action evaluation (SPACE); and (e) program evaluation.
SWOT analysis
This framework, which includes input from mission, vision, values, and goals, the internal and external factors may be combined to develop and evaluate specific adaptive strategy alternatives. SWOT stands for strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats. The adaptive alternatives suggested by the interactions of the four sets of variables.
There are various version of this analysis: (a) survival quadrant; (b) internal fix-it quadrant; (c) external fix-it quadrant; and (d) future quadrant
Product Life Cycle Analysis
This analysis is useful in selecting strategic alternatives based on the principle that all products and services go through several distinct phases or stages. These stages are; introduction; growth; maturity; and decline. In the course of strategy formulation, there two important question that are needed to be asked.
- In what stage of the life cycle are the organization’s products and services?
- How long are the stages likely to last?
This approach comes in useful in tracking hospital outpatient and inpatient revenue trends. This analysis may also be represented by tracking and forecasting the number of consumers or in the case of managed care plans the number of enrollees.
Boston Consulting Group’s Portfolio Analysis
This has become a fundamental tool for strategic analysis. This allows the market position of that health care organization as a whole or its separate programs to be examined in terms of its share of the market and the rate of service category growth. Relative market share can be thought of as the market share held by the largest rival organization compared to market share held by others in the service category. Growth rate is usually measured by the changes in level of gross patient service revenues or by population or service utilization growth. Classification as high, medium, or low may be determined through comparison with national or regional health care growth figures, the prime rate, return or alternative investments, or the stage in the product life cycle.
Extended Portfolio Matrix Analysis
Unlike the BCG’s Portfolio Analysis, which can be applied to healthcare, the extended portfolio matrix analysis must be applied with care. The profitability issue suggest that portfolio analysis for health care organizations might better utilize an extended portfolio matrix analysis that includes profitability dimension.
Strategic Position and Action Evaluation (SPACE)
This evaluation plan is an extension of two-dimensional portfolio analysis (BCG), and is used to determine the appropriate strategic posture of the organization. This allows the manager to incorporate a number of factors into the analysis and examine a particular strategic alternatives from several perspectives.
This analysis suggests the appropriateness of strategic alternatives based on factors relating to four dimensions: service category strengths, environmental stability, the organization’s relative competitive advantage, and the organization’s financial strength. It helps to determine the aggressive posture, competitive posture, conservative posture, and defensive posture. However, it is important to remember that the SPACE chart is a summary display; each factor should be analyzed individually as well. In particular, factors with very high or very low scores should receive special attention. In the end, the adaptive and market entry strategic decisions are inextricably linked.
Program Evaluation
This is especially useful in organizations where market share, service category strengths, and competitive advantage are not particularly important or are not relevant. Such organizations would typically be non-profits, government funded institutions, community health centers, and public community hospitals.
Public and non-profit institutions typically maintain any number of programs funded through such sources as state appropriations, federal grants, private etc. In a public health department, such programs might include HIV/AIDS education, disease surveillance, disease control, immunizations, food sanitation inspection, on-site sewage inspection, and many more. Two program evaluation methods that have been used successfully are needs/capacity assessment and program priority settings.
Health care gaps are identified through community involvement, political pressure, and community assessments such as those carried out by CDC.
Bibliography
Cedars - Sinai. (n.d.). About Us. Retrieved from Cedars - Sinai: http://cedars-sinai.edu/About-Us/index.aspx
Ginter, P. M., Swayne, L. E., & Duncan, W. J. (2002). Developing Strategic Alternatives. In P. M. Ginter, L. E. Swayne, & W. J. Duncan, Strategic Management of Health Care Organizations (p. 229). Carlton, Australia: Blackwell Publishing.
Mind Tools. (n.d.). Mission Statements and Vision Statements: Unleashing Purpose. Retrieved from Mind Tools: http://www.mindtools.com/pages/article/newLDR_90.htm
