Strategic Plans
Setting a course for your enterprise is exciting!
To turn your ideas into reality, it all begins with a strategy that people can get their heads around.
A strategy is a plan of action or policy designed to achieve a primary or overall aim. The keyword is OVERALL.
In healthcare, we sometimes find our thinking limited to the constraints of a business model, a regulation, or a policy. "We can't own that, we can't create a joint venture, we need a CON, etc." There is a long list of market hurdles to jump over.
These hurdles should not inhibit your organization's strategy for growth, shareholder value, or improving patient care. I've found in talking with so many physicians and C-Suite colleagues, that healthcare regulatory and policy constraints become mental handcuffs that are just too tight and stop the flow of creativity.
Frequently, strategy gets confused with tactics, and this is where you end up somewhere else. A typical example is a medical practice that has a strategy to "go paperless." I've seen instances when post-EMR installation (tactic), the paper medical records go away, but the overall amount of paper for the patient that is signed, scanned, printed, and faxed, actually increases!!!
When your overarching strategy is replaced with a tactic and does not include 100% of your operating and human workflow systems, you will miss the mark, every time.
Mark's bottom line: Your organization demands a crystal clear strategic plan to achieve your mission and advance your business. Spend the time inspecting your values, and tether your strategy to those values--it will keep your thinking at the strategic level.
Business plans
A business plan is all about tactics!
A great business plan requires expert industry knowledge, hard data, and writing expertise. It's a critical tool for leaders to launch a venture to improve business performance, develop new services, revamp management approaches, and measure outcomes across multiple functional areas.
Your business plan will demonstrate that your research and supporting assumptions can bring your idea to reality. It's the hardest part of any planning in healthcare, especially when you're asking someone else for time and money to attempt something new.
For your business plan, I have extensive knowledge of modern healthcare/managed care concepts. I am proficient in statistical analysis, data management, and analysis. I incorporate LEAN thinking into every aspect of your plan. I'll crystalize your thoughts and create a customized document designed for consumption for your audience, at the level of management you need.
To measure success, I'll apply benchmarking practices and techniques, and I'll identify any quality improvement tools that you'll need for success metrics.
It all begins with your idea and ends with a solid presentation that represents the great work you are capable of executing.
Technology plans
Your technology infrastructure is becoming more complex - Keep Up!
A robust technology strategy requires input from multidisciplinary teams that include all users in the value chain. In today's post-COVID-19 environment, those end-users now include patients who access their care through telemedicine services that you host!
Consider: You have your computer network that hosts various software platforms for both business and clinical applications. You connect multiple mobile devices as well as printers, scanners, cameras. Most likely, you have medical devices that feed information into your EMR, each of which requires their API (application user interface.) Oh, and let's not forget about the VPN tunnels that go to your various hospitals and or imaging centers or any other ancillary provider. And now, we have telemedicine services that require a separate strategy that must also be in a secure network.
As we add components to our system, too often, we do not account for the inter-operability required for a smooth workflow. We rely on technology companies to provide "turn-key" solutions; however, when you lead with technology, your workflow and business process frequently become slaves to the various platforms that reside on your network.
THINK DIFFERENTLY! Create a plan that launches off of your best-practice workflow and use techniques like LEAN to ensure your technology is supporting you and NOT the other way around! Look at each platform and determine if it adds value and how it needs to perform.
As business owners, physicians, executives, and operators, we rely heavily on technology to stay competitive in the market and deliver care in a cost-effective, efficient manner. The best way to create that future is a solid plan that includes your technology platform, your workflow, AND the end-users (that includes patients!) to adopt and embrace the technology.
I'll create your customized plan that uses best practice principles, so the technology works for you!
Proposals
A proposal is nothing more than a form of persuasive writing to convince someone to act following the writer's intent, and at the same time, it outlines the writer's goals and methods.
Proposals come in hundreds of flavors and are industry-specific. Healthcare proposals are commonly used to secure funding through a non-profit or government agency, or facilitate a policy change. Not so in Medical Practice Management or Physician/Executive Leadership---you can adopt a proposal approach in a very informal fashion to "test the waters" to determine if you should move on to the business planning phase. Here is your outline:
- State your purpose
- Give background information
- State a solution to the problem
- Show costs
- Conclusion
I like using this method to determine if an idea is going to "get legs." There is very little ownership in informal proposals, and they are just ideas that you put a little substance around.
The other, more complicated healthcare proposals are Request for Proposals (RFP). This document is most commonly used to bid out a project, get competing quotes for capital equipment, or to select a business partner like a revenue cycle or EMR provider.
An RFP is a very complete and concise document. It outlines everything you want in a product. It calls for the information you need to know about a company you are considering. Failure to ask for critical information could result in a knowledge gap that can come back to bite you. Responses to an RPF serves as the basis for your decision and must include everything you want to know and need to know.
The confidence in your choice will only be as good as the information you have in your RFP. So, you need to write a good one!
pitch decks
A pitch deck is the most straightforward presentation you’ll ever see, but it’s the most difficult to create.
A pitch deck is a marketing presentation that crystalizes the concept and answers basic questions about your product. I liken it to the idea of an elevator pitch where you must make your case in short order.
Pitch decks are traditionally created for investors in your attempt to raise capital for your product or the disposal of assets. Healthcare leaders, however, have adopted the pitch deck as a means of communicating resource needs and high-level information to physicians, CEOs, and Boards. It’s a short cut that behaves like a mini business plan. If done well, it can be a useful tool. On balance, unless properly researched, concise, and complete, you risk wasting your time and looking unprepared.
Scenario: As a Physician Practice Executive, you know that taking your idea or “ask” to your Governing Body requires you to have your pitch ready. So, you launch PowerPoint and begin to work on your presentation. You labor over the slides and include all the detail you believe supports your case. Then you brand it, refine it, and show it to a close colleague and get their opinion. Then you present it. During your pitch, someone asks one question that makes everyone pause, and you have to do more homework—your pitch did not land in the strike zone, and this can become a cycle that eventually kills the concept.
I have used pitch decks often enough to know that not only must you be able to answer some basic questions, you also have to tailor the pitch deck to fit your audiences’ eye and attention span. If done well, you and the concept will shine!
If a pitch deck is the best way to communicate with your audience, then I can help you follow a few simple steps and get you ready.
checklist
Checklists are not plans; however, there may be times when you require a tactic or need to execute something quickly. This is one of my favorite short cuts when the stakes are not high and need to move quickly.
You want to convey to your audience that you know what you’re doing, but sometimes there are multiple complicated steps. Writing a formal plan is only going to cause confusion and lose your audience.
Maybe you’re making an upgrade to your network or installing a new telephone system or launching a digital marketing initiative. All of these are initiatives that may fall within a broader strategic framework. However, there’s no reason to rewrite your entire plan when you can add a component by using a handy checklist.
A checklist can be a valuable tool when executing an initiative that has multiple steps. They allow you to make sure you have all the steps necessary and that they are in the proper sequence.
Simple, fast, and complete. An excellent checklist to help you move through the initiative and make sure you don’t miss anything along the way.
