how do you write a strategic plan for a hospital

How to Create a Strategic Plan

Looking for a way to take your company in a new and profitable direction? It starts with strategic planning. Keep reading to learn what a strategic plan is, why you need it and how you can strategically create one.

When it comes to business and finance, strategic planning will help you allocate your resources, energy and assets. When implemented, a strategic plan will begin to move your operations in a more profitable direction. The primary goal of the plan is to ensure you and any other stakeholders are on the same page and striving to reach the same goal.

Creating a strategic plan requires a disciplined effort. Once you put the plan into action, it will influence the segment of customers that you target, how you serve those customers and the experience those customers have.

Assess the Current Infrastructure and Operations

The first step in creating a strategic plan is to carefully assess your existing infrastructure and operations. You can do this through a SWOT analysis, which is an analysis of the company’s strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats. The goal here is to pinpoint the resources that you use to carry out your day-to-day operations, to look at your monthly revenue patterns, to list any company challenges related to the customer experience and, most importantly, to look at your marketing methods and ways to improve the overall customer experience.

Creation of Mission Statement and Objectives

The next step is to create a mission statement. You may already have one, but it’s important to note your mission at the top of the strategic plan document you create. This ensures everyone is focused on the same goal. Your mission statement should cover why you started the company and what you intend to accomplish through the products and services that you offer.

In addition to the mission statement, make sure to outline both short- and long-term objectives. List the objectives according to their priority and designate certain managers or employees to be responsible for each one. Also, jot down the resources that will be used to achieve each objective.

Measure Performance

Now that you know what you’re trying to achieve and who is responsible for each goal, it’s time to deploy the plan and measure its progress. A weekly meeting is extremely important for all managers and stakeholders provide feedback. Your goal is to determine if the company is headed in the right direction. If not, you’ll need to revise the strategic plan accordingly.

Strategic Plans Are Ongoing

Once your strategic plan helps you achieve several objectives, it’s smart to regroup and set new objectives. As your company grows, you can set new goals to ensure the company keeps moving forward. You can share the success of your strategic plan with potential investors as a way to tap into new capital funding.

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How To Implement Effective Strategic Planning In Healthcare

Are you feeling overwhelmed and uncertain about the future? If you work in the healthcare industry, you know firsthand how quickly things can change. As technology advances, regulations change, the population ages, and new diseases evolve at lightning speed, it can be tough to keep up. 

That's why implementing an effective strategic planning process is so important. It's a tool that helps healthcare organizations prioritize their goals, anticipate potential roadblocks, and quickly adapt to seize new opportunities. 

Whether you’re a manager or a top-level executive, this article will provide valuable insights and guidance to help you develop and execute a successful strategic plan.

Plus, as a bonus, you get a free strategic planning template prefilled with healthcare examples to help you get started. So, let's dive in and discover how strategic planning can help you navigate the changing landscape of the healthcare industry and achieve your organizational goals.

Strategic Planning in Healthcare: What Is It?

Strategic planning in healthcare helps you set business goals and decide how to allocate resources to achieve these goals. It involves looking at your organization’s internal and external environments using established strategic tools . 

Doing so lets you develop a strategic plan outlining what you want to achieve and how to get there. Think of it like building a roadmap that helps you get to where you want to go.

With a healthcare strategy, you’ll have a framework for making daily decisions aligned with your business objectives . This ensures you’re moving towards your long-term goals and objectives, even when making short-term decisions.

Examples of Strategic Planning in Healthcare

Here are some specific examples of how you can use strategic planning to improve your organization:

• Improve patient outcomes by identifying areas for improvement, such as reducing hospital-acquired infections or improving care coordination.
• Optimize staffing and resources by analyzing data to make informed decisions about hiring, training, and resource allocation.
• Identify new opportunities for growth and expansion, such as offering telemedicine, home healthcare, or specialized care for specific populations.
• Enhance financial performance by identifying opportunities for cost savings or revenue generation, such as reducing supply chain costs or expanding into new markets.
• Build strong partnerships and collaborations with community organizations or other healthcare providers to improve patient outcomes and enhance service offerings.

📚 Recommended read: Strategy study: The Ramsay Health Care Growth Study

Why Is Strategic Planning in Healthcare Important?

Boost profitability.

Strategic planning helps you improve your organization’s financial performance and achieve long-term sustainability. It lets you align resources with your goals to use them effectively and reduce costs. It also identifies inefficiencies in the organization so you can streamline processes and create better strategic initiatives to increase patient volume and experience. 

Furthermore, strategic planning helps you identify new revenue streams so you can diversify your income sources. 

Enhance collaboration and engagement

Strategic planning in healthcare uncovers employee issues and challenges, such as excessively long work hours, that cause your staff to lose motivation. Unmotivated healthcare staff results in poor employee engagement and high turnover. 

Having a clear company vision and involving employees in strategic planning will increase their morale and make them feel valued and heard. This will lead to better engagement rates and higher employee retention.

Increase efficiency 

Strategic planning helps you align your operational activities with predetermined goals. This ensures that every action the organization takes is a step toward achieving your business objectives. Strategic planning also guides management in making better decisions, especially on resource allocation. 

Improve communication 

A good strategic plan should be shared with all stakeholders so they can form a clear picture of how their actions affect a future outcome. As a result, the entire organization develops better communication since all employees will constantly check that they’re all on the same page. Furthermore, you’d witness better collaboration as everyone strives to achieve a common goal. 

Drive alignment and strategy execution

By engaging key stakeholders in the planning process, your healthcare organization can align your goals and objectives with your overall strategy, ensuring everyone is on the same page and working toward the same goals. This strategic alignment helps eliminate confusion and increase clarity across the organization, which leads to effective strategy execution . 

5 Strategic Planning Tools

Here’s a list of strategy tools and frameworks that can help you identify gaps in your healthcare strategy, prioritize strategic initiatives, and develop business goals: 

1. Balanced Scorecard (BSC)

The Balanced Scorecard translates strategic goals into measurable indicators or metrics to help you balance four critical organizational perspectives: financial, customer, internal processes, and organizational capacity. 

Using this tool ensures that your organization aligns with your strategic objectives and that you’re measuring the right KPIs to track progress toward those objectives. 

2. Objectives and key results (OKR)

The OKR framework sets specific and measurable objectives and tracks progress toward them using key results. Objectives should be ambitious and challenging but achievable. Meanwhile, key results should be specific and measurable and have defined target values.

This framework promotes accountability and transparency since everyone works toward the same goals.

3. Political, economic, sociocultural, and technological (PEST) analysis

PEST analysis helps you understand the external factors that may impact your operations. By using this tool, you can identify potential opportunities and threats so you can anticipate and respond to changes in the external environment. 

For example, PEST can help you identify a shift toward consumer-driven healthcare. Consequently, this enables you to invest in telemedicine and other digital healthcare technologies to meet patients’ changing needs. 

4. Strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, threats (SWOT) analysis

SWOT analysis is a simple yet powerful way to identify the internal and external factors that can impact your organization’s success. 

For example, if you discover that staffing levels are a weakness, you may decide to invest in staff training or recruitment programs. Or, if you identify an opportunity to expand into a new service area, you may choose to allocate resources for the expansion.

5. Theory of change (TOC)

The theory of change is a framework that helps your organization articulate the desired outcomes and specific steps you need to take to achieve them. This model provides a more structured approach to achieving goals by identifying the inputs required for success. 

For example, if you want to reduce hospital readmissions, you may use the theory of change to identify the inputs needed (staff training on patient education), activities needed (discharge planning), and desired outcomes (reduction in hospital readmissions). By mapping out this logic model and continuously evaluating the initiative, your organization can adjust its activities to achieve your desired outcomes and improve the quality of care for your patients.

📚 Recommended read: 23 Best Strategy Tools For Your Organization in 2023

How To Implement A Strategic Plan In Healthcare

Implementing a strategic healthcare plan can be challenging, but not when you have a comprehensive healthcare strategy template to guide your planning process. Here are steps to help you get started:

1. Establish goals

The first step is to establish clear and measurable goals. These goals should align with your organization’s mission and vision , and be SMART (specific, measurable, achievable, relevant, and time-bound). 

Examples of goals in healthcare include reducing hospital readmission rates, improving patient satisfaction scores, or increasing revenue.

2. Set milestones and measure progress

Once you establish goals, it’s important to set milestones and measure progress regularly. This allows your organization to track its progress toward achieving its goals, identify areas for improvement, and make necessary adjustments. 

Milestones may be monthly, quarterly, or yearly, depending on the nature of the goal.

3. Develop an execution plan

You need an execution plan outlining the activities and strategies to achieve the established goals. It should include a timeline, resources needed, and specific individuals responsible for each action or project. 

4. Monitor performance and adapt as needed

Once the plan is in motion, you should monitor its performance regularly and make necessary adjustments when you notice deviations. You must be flexible and willing to change your execution plan as needed. 

For example, if the original plan doesn't turn out to be effective, it's important to quickly reevaluate and come up with an alternative strategy.

5. Communicate regularly

Communication is key in implementing a strategic plan . Each stakeholder should understand their role and how their work fits into the big picture. You must inform them of progress toward the established goals, any changes to the execution plan, and other relevant information. This will help you build trust and get buy-in, which are essential for successful strategy execution.

6. Celebrate successes

Celebrating successes helps maintain motivation and momentum. It shows staff and stakeholders that their hard work is paying off. This can be done in various ways, such as recognizing staff members who have contributed significantly to the plan or sharing positive feedback from patients. 

Positive reinforcement will motivate employees to keep striving to achieve your organization’s objectives.

📚 Recommended read: How Parker University uses Cascade to help them hold a position as a leader in Patient-Centric Healthcare

Execute Your Healthcare Strategy With Cascade 🚀

Take the guesswork out of strategic planning in healthcare. With Cascade , you can easily create an execution plan customized to your goals and objectives, including assigning initiatives and setting deadlines for each team member involved. 

Here’s an example of a healthcare strategic plan in Cascade: 

You can also leverage easy-to-use dashboards and visualizations that provide real-time data on your progress toward your goals.

Here’s an example of a real-time dashboard: 

Cascade lets you collaborate with your team, assign responsibilities, and communicate progress, ensuring everyone is aligned and working toward the same objectives. 

Whether you run a small clinic or a large healthcare organization, Cascade will help you make strategic planning in healthcare a breeze. 

Book a demo of Cascade’s healthcare strategy software today, or get started for free!

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Strategic Planning In Healthcare: 2023 Guide + Examples

Sara Seirawan

This guide contains new healthcare planning strategies, their benefits, examples, traps to avoid, and all you need to know.

Whether you’re a medical business owner, an executive, or a practitioner, my promise to you is that, by the end of this article, you’ll get a razor-sharp understanding of what strategic planning is and how it can skyrocket your operational efficiency.

Here’s a brief outline of what I’ll cover:

What is strategic planning in healthcare?

• The importance of strategic planning in healthcare
• 3 Common Mistakes when implementing strategies
• The best 8 healthcare planning strategies
• ‘Secret’ to a fruitful healthcare planning campaigns

Strategic 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:

• 15 Year Vision Timeline
• Brand Obituary
• 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:

• 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.
• 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.
• 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.
• 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:

• Set of objectives that are relevant to it
• Measurement and matrices
• Progress Record of each target
• 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 .

If you’re busy and looking for great healthcare brand strategy facilitators, contact us here and we’d gladly help you.

• what is strategic planning in healthcare
• the benefit of strategic planning in healthcare
• 3 common mistakes when implementing healthcare strategic planning
• best healthcare planning strategies with examples
• the secret to a fruitful healthcare strategic plan

Sara Seirawan, Head of content, manages unnus's content distribution and marketing efforts. She's also a chief author at unnus Magazine.

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Examples of Strategic Planning in Healthcare

Future-focused healthcare leaders maintain robust strategic planning processes to ensure a strong mission, goals, and roadmap for their organizations. 

Strategic planning provides an avenue for hospitals, health systems, physician practices, and other healthcare organizations to chart a course to achieving long-term sustainability and success in a dynamic healthcare environment. Leaders can leverage the process to identify and tackle a broad range of challenges, from internal staffing issues to emerging competitors or shifting patient preferences.  

Examples of the benefits of strategic planning in healthcare include building alignment across the organization, mitigating risks, optimizing efficiencies, enhancing patient satisfaction, and improving care quality and outcomes. 

Elements of strategic planning 

Key elements of strategic planning in healthcare include: 

Mission and vision

A hospital mission statement defines an organization’s primary identity and purpose within the communities it serves, while the vision statement provides its view for the future. Having a clear mission and vision help ensure stakeholders are aligned and focused on common goals. 

SWOT analysis

Healthcare leaders use a SWOT analysis to identify an organization’s strengths, weaknesses, opportunities for improvement, and threats. For example, a strength may be the organization’s brand name and standing within the community, and a weakness may be an overwhelming focus on inpatient services. Expanding outpatient care services is an example of an opportunity, while a threat may be competition from retail healthcare providers who offer more convenient care options. 

The comprehensive SWOT analysis of both internal operations and external factors is a crucial part of the healthcare strategic planning process in defining the entity’s current state and future opportunities. 

Goals and objectives

Healthcare leaders use insights gained from the SWOT analysis to define the organization’s goals and objectives. Using scenario modeling allows them to test various strategies or combinations of strategies to identify realistic, effective, and measurable objectives. 

Stakeholder engagement

Another vital element in ensuring realistic and actionable goals is engaging stakeholders organization-wide in the healthcare strategic planning process. Gathering broad input from individuals at various levels builds buy-in and helps them feel more invested and motivated in helping to achieve the overall goals and objectives. 

Examples of strategic planning in healthcare 

Healthcare leaders can incorporate a wide range of initiatives as part of the strategic planning process, depending on the needs and goals of the organization. Three examples of such initiatives include: 

Hospital expansion

A regional hospital sought to expand services in a growing community on the edge of its service area. To evaluate the opportunity for its strategic plan, health system leaders analyzed market data, including existing healthcare services, potential competitors, referral trends, population growth, and demographic trends.  

The analyses revealed a dearth of healthcare options in the target community. Rapid population growth had outpaced the addition of new businesses and services as the area transitioned from rural to suburban. The need for emergency care was the most pressing, as residents had to drive more than 30 minutes to the closest hospital emergency department. 

Using local market data to bolster its case, the health system successfully won a competitive application process to gain state approval to build a free-standing emergency department in the community. The new facility allowed the health system to extend much-needed services to the area and establish a foundation from which to expand with additional services in the future. 

Improving patient safety

As another example of strategic planning in hospitals, leaders at a community hospital identified a need to improve patient safety at a skilled nursing facility (SNF) the hospital had recently acquired. The SNF once had an excellent reputation, but care quality had suffered in recent years due to long-running labor shortages. Hospital leaders did a thorough review of the SNF’s operations, including scheduling, staffing levels, patient flow, safety practices, and patient care and outcomes. 

The review revealed two primary deficiencies. First, the SNF was not adequately adjusting staffing levels to correspond with changes in patient demand. Second, patient safety protocols were not consistently followed, having fallen off over time due to inadequate staffing. 

To address these challenges, the hospital worked with executives and clinical nurse leaders at the SNF to revise scheduling practices to better flex staff levels with patient demand, including using modeling tools to project changes in patient demand. They also boosted recruitment efforts, including partnering with a nearby nursing school to offer incentives for students to work at the SNF after graduation. 

Leaders updated patient safety protocols to align with current, proven best practices and established safety officers to lead implementation and build accountability across the facility. With these changes, the hospital succeeded in significantly improving patient safety at the SNF, including reducing patient falls, bedsores, and other adverse events. 

Health system integration

Leaders at two mid-sized health systems wanted to ensure a smooth transition as the entities integrated their operations and services. The organizations were merging as part of a broader strategic plan to strengthen overall healthcare services within their communities and their combined financial health amid a turbulent economy.  

In developing an integration plan, leaders brought in a third-party consultant to evaluate factors such as services, operations, leadership structures, market demand, payer contracts, and organizational cultures at each health system. Armed with those insights, the organizations identified numerous opportunities — including duplicative services that could be combined for greater economies of scale, service line gaps that could be addressed by shifting resources from closing facilities to new areas, and a need to renegotiate payer contracts to make them more favorable for the larger, combined organization. 

As with many mergers, leaders faced reluctance from some long-term clinical leaders and staff who were concerned about integrating with a previous competitor. Leaders developed a robust communication plan to address these concerns with staff and other community stakeholders and raise awareness about the business case for the merger. They also built buy-in by seeking input from individuals at various levels across both organizations, and identified common cultural priorities that could be leveraged in developing a unified identity.  

Through these efforts, health system leaders developed a comprehensive strategic plan for integration, including new mission, vision, and values statements for the combined entity, and a leadership structure that drew legacy leaders from both health systems to emphasize it as a merger of equals. 

Conclusion 

As these examples of strategic planning in healthcare organizations illustrate, leaders routinely encounter a variety of challenges as markets continually shift and patient preferences evolve. The strategic planning process provides a rigorous process for organizations to assess these challenges, identify opportunities, and develop thoughtful, data-driven strategies to move their organizations forward toward long-term success.  

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Tips for creating a strategic plan for hospitals, 5 best practices for creating a hospital strategic plan in uncertain times.

I came across this article the other day on Becker Hospital Review and thought it would be a great one to share for those in the medical field who are in the strategic planning process.  James R. Trimarchi, director of strategic planning at Southwestern Vermont Medical Center in Bennington, explains what he believes are the 5 best practices for creating a hospital strategic plan in uncertain times.

Healthcare reform legislation has increased demands concerning quality, cost and efficiency of hospitals and health systems. One way to manage these expectations is to create a strategic plan that clearly outlines goals for the future and how to reach them. “Strategic planning is more important now than it’s ever been,” says James R. Trimarchi, director of strategic planning at Southwestern Vermont Medical Center in Bennington. Although strategic planning can help hospitals manage changes from new rules and regulations, it presents its own challenges. “Strategic planning works best when the marketplace is either in a stable trajectory or a known trajectory. The current healthcare environment is neither,” Mr. Trimarchi says. However, practices like frequent evaluation can help combat the uncertain future. Mr. Trimarchi offers five tips for creating a strategic plan in today’s world.

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1. Follow the strategic plan anatomy. The strategic plan establishes several strategies that help focus resources to better achieve mid-range goals that support the organization’s mission and vision. A strategic plan has a cascading anatomy. The mission and vision serve as the touch stone and rarely change. Goals are three- to five-year targets that if achieved would move the organization towards its mission and vision. Strategies are specific actionable approaches. Measures monitor progress towards the goals and are the tool used to determine if particular strategies are working. If a measure indicates a strategy is not effectively moving the organization towards its goals, then the strategy should be discontinued and a different strategy should be launched. Adhering to this cascading anatomy (mission, vision, goals and strategies tracked by measures) helps hospitals avoid drifting away from the core mission and vision in uncertain times yet allows organizations to remain flexible enough to respond to changes in regulations and the marketplace by reallocating resources, Mr. Trimarchi says.

2. Push strategies close to the mission and vision. The larger the separation between strategies and the core mission and vision the more regulatory or marketplace changes can disrupt the relevance of the strategic plan. Choosing strategies closely linked to the mission and vision introduces a level of certainty to an otherwise vague future.

3. Focus on a few goals. Following the “less is more” philosophy is key to forming a successful strategic plan, according to Mr. Trimarchi. If the plan includes too many goals, “not only can you not keep them straight, but you dilute resources,” he says. Instead of a list of 20 goals, Mr. Trimarchi suggests concentrating on the top five to six concerns. Hospitals can then reallocate resources to support and achieve the most important goals.

4. Be realistic. “Identifying the doable” is essential to strategic plans. Keeping goals and strategies realistic will help hospitals make real improvements in the organization, whereas spending time on impractical goals will stifle hospitals’ progress. A common mistake people make when forming a strategic plan is including strategies or goals that are “too grandiose without enough capital or resources to accomplish them” Mr. Trimarchi says. Identifying feasible strategies may be particularly challenging in the current environment. “Ascertaining the doable is somewhat dependent upon your ability to predict the future,” Mr. Trimarchi says. He suggests leaders honestly ask themselves whether they can actually implement a strategy to help ascertain whether a strategy is realistic.

5. Develop really good measures. One of the most important elements of an effective strategic plan is developing measures to monitor progress made towards the goals. Depending on what the measures show, hospitals may have to alter strategies to better reach their goals. “It is so important today to have really good measures to monitor where you’re going because the environment is changing so fast and you may need to change strategies,” Mr. Trimarchi says.Mr. Trimarchi describes a measure Southwestern Vermont Medical Center used to assess progress in its goal of reducing CT scan utilization. SVMC wanted to lower CT use per patient because of the harmful effects of radiation. Simultaneously, however, the hospital was trying to open a new market. If the hospital measured the overall volume of CT scans, the numbers would show an increase because of additional patients from the new market. Instead, SVMC tracked the number of CT scans for patients from a particular zip code in the original market. This technique more accurately measured progress towards the goal of reducing CT scan utilization because it reflected CT use per person within a defined geography. As the overall use of CT scans increased due to an expanding market, the CT scans per zip code decreased, suggesting lower usage per person. This example demonstrates the complexity of thinking required to develop useful strategic measures.

The rate at which hospitals should measure progress depends in part on how fast hospitals anticipate meeting their goals, according to Mr. Trimarchi. A short-term goal will require more frequent tracking and evaluation of measures, such as monthly, whereas long-term goals can be reviewed quarterly. Regardless of the frequency of review the question that should be answered is ‘Are we making progress or do we need to change the strategies?’ Mr. Trimarchi says.

Adhering to these five basic practices can help hospitals develop a strategic plan that is focused, effective and flexible. By leveraging measures to continually evaluate progress towards the goals the strategic plan becomes a living document that can guide an institution through uncertain times.

To view the article in it’s entirety, click here .

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5 Strategic Planning Best Practices in Hospital Management

Managing 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.

Topics: Healthcare Strategic Planning

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Aiming High Strategic Plan 2021-2025

“The greatest danger for most of us is not that our aim is too high and we miss it, but that it is too low and we reach it.” Michelangelo

The Drive to be World Class for our Community

Message from our board chair and president & ceo.

In the words of artist and innovator Michelangelo, “The greatest danger for most of us is not that our aim is too high and we miss it, but that it is too low and we reach it.” This is a reminder that we have kept top of mind in charting this exciting path for the future. We committed to aim high and to support our communities in their aspirations and dreams for the future.

In developing this plan, we have been inspired by the communities we serve and the collective aspiration of being world class. We are dedicated to being part of that collective vision. When we looked to the end of the next decade, we looked beyond our own organization and our own self interest. We looked to the future with a broader lens of what we see in our community and that is a world class health system supporting healthier lives. We are dedicated to seeing that vision realized and this plan begins our journey along that path and our contribution to the success of the communities we serve.

We have set out what success looks like a decade from now and five-year milestones letting us know that we are on the right path. We have identified three key strategic directions with four goals each to achieve the results we are aspiring to. Although we have a clear plan for where we are going and how we will get there, we also know that our environment changes in small and in major ways - this last year is a great example of the impact of major unexpected change. We will be continuously testing our plan to make sure it is right for the environment we find ourselves in and when needed, make adjustments.

Our plan has been informed by thousands of voices – patients, families, our hospital team members, partners and community leaders. It has also benefited from the significant experiences and changes of the last couple of years including the community and organizational response to Covid-19, the launch of a new hospital information system with our partners at St. Mary’s General Hospital, and the changing delivery of health care through Ontario Health Teams. We have also paid close attention to our history and are building on our strengths and the successes of the past as we look to the future.

This past year has reinforced many things, most importantly the strength, compassion and dedication of our team, the power and strength of our partners, that life is precious, and that our reason for being is the people we serve and the people who deliver that service. Our response to Covid-19 has also shown us just how much we can accomplish together and has inspired us in shaping what’s possible in the years to come.

In addition to our new vision, we have built on our mission statement and identified four key organizational values that will serve as our foundation for the future. We have been inspired and driven by the feedback we have received from hospital team members, partners and patients to our plan for the future and the positive impact it will have on people’s lives. We have no doubt that together, through our belief in each other and our community, our commitment to continuously raising the bar, and our resolve to savour and celebrate our successes along the way; we will collectively realize our dream of world class.

We will aim high.

Vision, Mission & Values

A world class health system supporting healthier lives.

Deliver an exceptional health care experience with compassion. Driven by inspired people, an unwavering quality focus, strong partnerships and innovative solutions.

• We are engaged, invested and here for one another
• We bring our best every day to deliver high quality safe care
• We take ownership for our own safety and the safety of others
• We see the person and treat everyone with empathy and compassion
• What we do and how we do it matters to us
• We enjoy what we do
• We act like “owners”
• We keep our word and believe others will too
• We believe that we accomplish more through partnerships and collaboration
• We take a system first approach to improvement
• Coaching is delivered and received as support
• We are transparent and consistent
• We have the courage to innovate and continuously raise the bar
• We find a way
• We dream big and are tenacious about making them a reality
• We inspire curiosity, inquiry and discovery
• We never stop learning and teaching
• We are willing to lead and to have others lead
• We take ownership
• We value our individual differences and our common grounds
• We value all perspectives and integrate them into everything we do
• We welcome and respect the diversity of our patients, team members and partners
• We are committed to equitable treatment and elimination of discrimination in all its forms

Grand River Hospital is the largest health service provider in Waterloo Region and Guelph-Wellington and provides regional care services. We are proud to be a community teaching hospital and a preferred destination for learners from many disciplines. In 2020, 750 student learners joined the GRH team, for 60+ professional disciplines.

We have two campuses with three satellite locations and have an annual budget of $400M.

Our Community

Waterloo Region includes the three cities of Cambridge, Kitchener and Waterloo, and the four townships of North Dumfries, Wellesley, Wilmot and Woolwich. With a population of more than 630,000 people, Waterloo Region is one of the fastest growing areas in Ontario.

Our Care Services

• Cancer Care
• Complex Continuing Care
• Critical Care (ICU)
• Laboratory Medicine
• Medical Imaging
• Mental Health and Addictions
• Rehabilitation
• Renal (Kidney)

Strategic Plan Engagement

“A health system that is among the best in the world in terms of experience for the people we serve and our teams, health outcomes and sustainability as a system.” What Being World Class Means to Us

Measures of Success

• Our board, leadership and team make up better reflects the community we serve
• We will rank in the top decile in Ontario for patient/family and team experience
• We will rank in the top decile in Canada for selected/key patient quality and safety results
• Our new acute care infrastructure plan is ready to go to market
• Maximize government funding to support high quality care and services close to home. Increase non-ministry revenue by $20 million/year and achieve a bottom line equal to 2% of total revenue to support strategic investments
• Innovation collaborative is in place with local medtech, education and healthcare organizations, and GRH will be recognized as a leader in care innovation locally and nationally
• KW4 OHT is fully operational (integrated funding enveloped and integrated outcome accountabilities)
• The 3 RoW hospitals will be functioning as one system (does not require formal integration)
• Will have established or strengthened Regional Centres of Excellence and have approval for a neurosurgery program
• Our Health Information System (HIS) is fully optimized and used beyond our walls
• GRH will have advanced the maturity of its practices to be a recognized leader as an insight driven organization
• Globally recognized brand for health care excellence, attracting top talent from around the world
• One integrated health system for the community
• Patient and family driven culture - they are part of everything we do
• State of the art infrastructure, technology, and therapies
• Community driven innovation collaborative is recognized as a leader in health care delivery innovation
• Care is primarily delivered outside of our traditional hospital walls
• An insight driven organization
• Significantly grow our revenue from all sources in order to support investments in our world class vision

Strategic Directions

Description.

We value people above all else and our aim is to make a positive difference in their lives every day.  We will put the experience of our patients & their families, our team members (Physicians, staff, learners and volunteers) and our partners at the very top of our agenda.

Key Strategic Goals which will enable success

• Continue to support our teams to be world class
• Advance diversity, equity and inclusion across the organization by creating structures and launching programs for long-term, sustainable change.
• Maximize government funding to support high quality care and services close to home.  Invest in world class by increasing non-ministry revenue and operating efficiency through innovation, entrepreneurship and philanthropy.

We will be an engaged partner working with our partners, patients and their families to co-develop a truly world class system to advance the health and health outcomes of people in our community.

• Play a leadership role in working with our partners to make the Ontario Health Team (OHT) vision a reality.
• Implement solutions to ensure the physical infrastructure needs of high quality, safe care are met today and tomorrow.
• Champion the delivery of integrated hospital services in our region. Where appropriate, strengthen or establish GRH as a regional centre of excellence in select program, service and support areas.
• Implement systems and innovative tools to identify, share, and continuously embed world class practices into our operations.

We will leverage the collective talents and strengths of GRH, our community, and our partners to innovate and accelerate the transformation of health care delivery.

• Build a culture of innovation and research that encourages a spirit of curiosity, discovery, and improvement.
• Build innovation capacity.
• Position GRH as a preferred destination for learners in order to prepare for, and inform, future health care delivery.
• Become an insight driven organization.

Strategic Planning in Hospitals

The healthcare field is always changing and progressing at a rate unlike any other. Over the past few decades it has become more and more important to plan for the future in order for any healthcare practice to be successful for years to come. By planning for the unknown, hospitals, clinics, private practices and other organizations in the healthcare field can be better equipped for whatever may come along down the road.

From the financial side of running an organization , to structural decisions within the hospital or clinic, planning is a necessity. A hospital strategic plan allows for more efficiency in all aspects of the business of running a practice, no matter how big or small.

What is Strategic Planning in Healthcare?

Many people wonder what strategic planning is in healthcare and, fortunately, the answer is simple. Strategic health planning involves creating objectives and setting goals for where a company would like to go in the future, and then constructing a plan to achieve these objectives. In this industry especially, healthcare planning must take into account potential government policy changes, technological advancements and economic trends that could change an organization’s operations in a significant way.

The importance of strategic planning in healthcare should not go unnoticed by any hospital or health system looking to succeed not only in the short run, but long term as well.

One key factor that should be the basis to strategic planning in healthcare organizations is the organization of the institution. Understanding the organization of the institution and how this organization is necessary for the entire system to succeed is important in creating an effective plan with specific strategies.

Sometimes reevaluating who controls which aspects of the business, and the hierarchy that follows, can be beneficial.

Having a sound foundation in which the organization is built upon is important so that communication and ideas can flow freely while implementing strategic healthcare planning. Designing company goals and a path to achieve these objectives allows staff at every level, from administrators to physicians, to have a drive and passion that is extremely important in the medical field.

Benefits of Strategic Planning in Healthcare

The benefits of strategic planning in healthcare are numerous mainly because healthcare planning is composed of many components. Like most businesses, hospitals and healthcare institutions are operating at many levels. From patient care to financing, health systems need to plan for the future in more ways than one.

Unlike traditional plans, strategic planning takes into account what is to come for every sector of the organization, taking into account foreseeable changes for all departments.

The importance of strategic planning in healthcare is also seen when looking at an organization’s productivity. Most institutions believe that they are being as efficient as possible, however, taking a closer look at productivity can provide insight as to where improvements can be made and more specific plans can be set.

Some of the key areas that a hospital strategic plan can significantly improve include:

• Company Culture
• Goals and Objectives
• Operating Budgeting
• Service Line Decisions
• Risk Management
• Capital Planning
• Cost Accounting
• Long Range Forecasting

Questions At The Forefront Of All Healthcare Strategic Planning

Although every organization operates with a plan that is tailored to personal goals and objectives, hospitals and healthcare systems should ask themselves some crucial questions prior to strategic health planning.

What are the financial goals of the organization? Will the implemented changes have a positive impact on these goals?

Financial goals are different for every institution. Focusing on specific, attainable goals for the future of any organization’s finances is key in ensuring that the strategic plans that the organization makes will be beneficial in the long run.

Looking into the implications that the change that come with new plans for the future will have on finances is key in making strategic decisions.

Setting goals prior to strategic planning will help ensure these plans will positively impact the organization in the future.

Where can the organization grow?

Just because a hospital’s strategic plan is made does not necessarily mean that the plan is as effective as possible. Effective strategic plans take into account where an organization can grow. In some cases, growth is not possible in one area, but is in another. Healthcare institutions should look into the financial gains of growth through expansion in location, new access points, and services before beginning to plan.

What are the needs of the population that the organization serves? Will these needs change?

Healthcare systems and hospitals are designed to serve patients however they need. Although the demand for healthcare institutions will always be high, the way in which these institutions will be needed may change.

Understanding future market trends and industry directions is important in order to plan ahead for what patients will need.

How can the organization bridge the gap in achieving critical success factors?

Many times healthcare systems understand the success factors that are necessary to carry out the institution’s vision, but have difficulty implementing them in day to day functions. Strategic planning should incorporate a way to carry out these factors so that success can be achieved efficiently.

Understanding the Healthcare Market

The goals set by an organization cannot be carried out unless there are sound financial and organizational plans set in motion. Unfortunately, understanding the healthcare market is tricky when the system is so volatile. The cost of medical technology and other funds necessary to run a functional healthcare business is not steady.

Changes in policy and law occur periodically, increasing the need for strategic planning in healthcare. Without the proper knowledge it is not easy to know where prices are going, and in which areas to save. Evaluating which investments are more risky than others is important to ensure every decision made is one that will be beneficial down the road.

In order for any business, especially a hospital or medical practice, to stay afloat, long term goals must be determined and eventually met for the longevity of the business. To do so, an analysis of the local markets and the industry as a whole must be conducted to predict the future of these markets.

Being able to accurately predict forecasts is imperative when dealing with multi-million dollar funds. This is not an easy feat if data is not carefully considered, and strategic hospital and health planning has not been conducted thoroughly by those who fully know how to prepare for what is ahead.

The Strata Decision Solution: StrataJazz

At Strata Decision Technology, we have a knack for understanding medical markets and ensuring all future targets are seen through for our customers. We have created an all in one system, StrataJazz , which allows leaders in the healthcare industry to strategically plan for what is to come, increasing efficiency across the board.

In the United States, 1 in 5 hospitals have integrated our platform into their organization, resulting in maximum productivity at all levels. StrataJazz is the solution for all that encompasses strategic healthcare planning, like budgeting, tracking, equipment replacement, monthly variance, and productivity reporting.

StrataJazz incorporates our customers past and current data to better understand where  cost improvements  can be made and money can be saved. The Strata Decision experts take into account the organization’s goals, both financially and organizationally.

Through powerful analytics and tactful planning, StrataJazz provides operational budgeting and  capital planning strategies  that are guaranteed to improve how any healthcare organization functions from the ground up.

StrataJazz’s strategic hospital planning uses sophisticated models to determine a long term plan, by understanding operating margins. By incorporating investment goals and how they will likely impact the organization’s P&L, cash flow, and balance sheet, StrataJazz increases the predictability of how to save and where to invest. Short term impacts of market dynamics are analyzed, which can be helpful in understanding where the market may head.

We compare the company’s performance to the leaders in rating agency’s outlooks, including those of Moody’s, Fitch, and S&P. Organizational decisions will also be more accurate through case by case scenario analytics.

Key To Financial Stability

There is risk involved in any investing, but StrataJazz helps manage and assess risk to ensure a more stable financial future. Our system will predict what changes in reimbursements, salaries, and volume can do to performance.

Through analysis tools and scenario modeling, uncertainty in future markets can be minimized, allowing more strategic healthcare planning and decisions to be made. Rolling forecasting used by StrataJazz evaluates risk factors like discrepancies in bundled payments, mergers and acquisitions.

By providing timely and accurate monthly projections and key performance indicators, opportunities for improvements financially, in patient care, and in staff productivity are endless.

Strata Decision Technology has found the key to successful strategic healthcare planning. We have a passion for helping healthcare systems budget and create a long term hospital strategic plan to ensure a safe and successful future. Through detailed analytics and expert advice, StrataJazz will improve the financial status of any healthcare organization in the present and for the future.

We do the hard work for you, allowing you to focus on your number one priority: your patients.