The rising healthcare innovation trends, such as genomic medicine, bioelectric medicine, and nanomedicine, imply that future healthcare will be strikingly different from today’s healthcare. To survive and thrive in the future healthcare environment, healthcare organisations must plan well for the future and tap into their core capabilities and market opportunities. A critical tool for preparing for the future and evaluating capabilities, opportunities, and alternative paths to long-term success is strategic planning. Strategic planning involves identifying a healthcare organisation’s desired future state and the means to attain it through continuous evaluation of internal resources/capabilities and operating environment. It is a systematic and organised process that allows a healthcare institution to determine how to transition from its current state to a desired future situation and become a future-proof medical brand. Successful strategic planning requires healthcare managers to consider their organisations’ overarching vision, the areas of excellence to invest in, essential resources for strategy execution, and a priori SWOT analysis to make relevant and long-lasting transformations for the future.
The Importance of Defining an Overarching Vision for the Organisation
Defining an overarching vision for the healthcare organisation is a vital part of strategic plan development, a primary activity in the strategic planning process. Ginter, Duncan, and Swayne (2018) define vision as an “expression of hope” and a “description of the healthcare organisation when it is accomplishing its purpose” (p.263). Therefore, developing a far-reaching vision involves creating an image of the future and a picture of the organisation’s desired or ideal future state, which can encourage organisational members to think about possibilities (Buchbinder, Shanks, & Kite, 2019). Ginter et al. (2018) affirm that vision articulates what the healthcare organisation could be if all its members worked diligently to realise the possibilities. Thus, defining an overarching vision for the organisation is critical to communicating the institution’s long-term aspirations and purpose to stakeholders, including workers (Buchbinder et al., 2019; Ginter et al., 2018). The better the organisation’s employees understand its destination and aspirations, the better able they will be to comprehend the strategic plan and facilitate its implementation.
Besides communicating the organisation’s purpose and aspirations to stakeholders, an overarching vision helps inform the development of the strategic plan and measurable goals by which to evaluate the strategy’s success. Bright and Cortes (2022) claim that a core measure of an effective strategic plan is how well the strategy helps the organisation attain its mission and vision. Therefore, defining an overarching vision is critical to establishing a target for strategic plan development. Moreover, a far-reaching vision provides a high-level guide to organisational goals and objectives demonstrating the failure or success of the organisation’s strategy and the fulfilment of the grander objectives stipulated in the institution’s mission (Bright & Cortes, 2022; Ginter et al., 2018). In that sense, vision links strategy to the organisation’s performance objectives and mission and helps organisational members see connections between the firm’s aspirations and personal contributions to its purpose, which could foster employee engagement and a spirit of continuous improvement for a successful organisation in the long term.
Areas of Excellence in Which to Invest
In addition to their organisation’s overarching vision, healthcare managers must consider the areas of excellence to invest in during the strategic planning process. Successful identification of excellent investment areas is predicated on the healthcare manager’s forecasting aptitude and ability to make well-informed, credible assumptions regarding the future (Buchbinder et al., 2019; Ginter et al., 2018). According to Ginter et al. (2018), looking to the future (forecasting) is a science and an art. The science entails rigorous external evaluation, while the art involves strategic thinking. Strategic thinking involves systems thinking, understanding relationships, seeing the big picture, and using critical thinking to establish the implications of investing in what is seen as vital areas of investment for future success (Ginter et al., 2018; Harrison, 2021). It encompasses organisational and industry/market awareness, anticipation, assessment, pattern recognition, interpretation, synthesis, and reflection impelled by a desire to know, understand, and succeed (Dhir, Dhir, & Samanta, 2018; Ginter et al., 2018). Combined with the science of external analysis, the art of strategic thinking enables the healthcare manager to generate pragmatic strategic assumptions regarding the future for identifying the areas of excellence in which to invest.
External assessment is a strategic thinking and planning activity that can contribute to the identification of appropriate areas for investment in two primary ways. Firstly, external analysis can lead a healthcare manager to identify and understand current vital issues, trends, and changes that can inform decision-making regarding the best areas in which to invest (Buchbinder et al., 2019; Ginter et al., 2018). Secondly, external evaluation can enable a strategic manager to detect weak or early signals of emerging trends and transformations in the healthcare organisation’s outer environment, which may portend an excellent area of investment for future success (Bright & Cortes, 2022; Ginter et al., 2018; Harrison, 2021). From the evidence of current and emerging trends generated via external analysis, the healthcare manager can deduce important shifts in the health workforce, population health, consumer preferences, medical technology, healthcare regulation, and economic patterns (Buchbinder et al., 2019; Ginter et al., 2018). If such changes continue or actually do occur, they may represent excellent opportunities/areas of investment for the healthcare organisation’s future survival and success.
However, external analysis can be a complex and time-consuming activity without some organisation/structure. In particular, the process of external assessment can be overwhelming and time-consuming because it requires a healthcare manager to evaluate virtually all aspects of their organisation’s external environment to determine potential areas of excellence in which to invest and their future implications for the institution (Buchbinder et al., 2019). Moreover, analysing a health institution’s external environment can be challenging and time-consuming because healthcare organisations typically operate in multiple, nested systems (Ginter et al., 2018). For example, a healthcare organisation may be nested in a particular service area (the micro-environment), such as cancer treatment, which is subsequently embedded in the healthcare industry – the meso-environment – that is then nested in the broader macro-environment. These multiple, nested/embedded systems increase the dynamism of the outside environment, contributing to the complexity of the external analysis process (Ginter et al., 2018; Khan et al., 2018). Thus, it is necessary to break the external evaluation process into logical components and perform the analysis according to an established plan or model.
One of the most common frameworks for conducting external assessment is Michael Porter’s Five Forces Model. This model identifies five factors/forces that, when examined, can reveal potential areas of excellence to invest in for a healthcare organisation’s future survival and success. The five factors/forces include the health workforce, healthcare consumers, technological innovations, the regulatory landscape, and competitive rivalry (Buchbinder et al., 2019; Ginter et al., 2018). Analysing the healthcare workforce can be invaluable in determining the availability of personnel and identifying the specific subsets of health workers that are critical to a healthcare organisation’s future success (Buchbinder et al., 2019; Harrison, 2021). For example, if gynaecology is a major clinical initiative of a healthcare organisation, assessing gynaecologists’ current and anticipated demand and supply in the market could enable the organisation to determine whether it should invest in training/recruiting more gynaecologists for the future success of its gynaecology program.
Similarly, analysing health consumers and technological innovations could lead a strategic healthcare manager to identify patient- and technology-related areas of excellence to invest in for their organisation’s future survival and success. For instance, analysis of patient trends in the United Arab Emirates (UAE) could reveal how patients are increasingly becoming the central focus of health service delivery in the country (Bodolica & Spraggon, 2019). Based on this evidence, a healthcare organisation in the UAE could consider investing in a patient-centric model of care provision to ensure its survival and success in the long term. Likewise, assessment of technological innovations could enable strategic managers to recognise breakthrough medical technologies, such as using nanobots to unclog arteries, which represent areas of excellence to invest in for their organisation’s future existence and success (Buchbinder et al., 2019). Additionally, emerging technological innovations may render certain clinical roles obsolete, give rise to new jobs, and increase the requirement of particular medical equipment (Buchbinder et al., 2019; Safi, Thiessen, & Schmailzl, 2018). Therefore, an assessment of innovations in technology and health consumers could provide insights into the medical equipment, subsets of the health workforce, and innovative models of health service provision to invest in for a healthcare organisation to be successful in the long term.
From Porter’s perspective, other factors in the external environment that can provide insights into the areas of excellence to invest in are the regulatory environment and competitors. The government continually enacts influential healthcare legislation that, when examined, can help strategic managers identify critical areas of investment for their organisation’s long-term survival and success (Buchbinder et al., 2019). For example, the Abu Dhabi Department of Health introduced a new rule on patient data privacy in late 2020, suggesting that patient data protection is a crucial area to invest in for the future existence and success of healthcare organisations in Abu Dhabi (McMillan & Heaney, 2021). Additionally, tracking and analysing competitors can help a healthcare organisation gain valuable competitive intelligence that, when compiled, can reveal competitors’ strategic intent. An understanding of competitors’ strategic goals can help healthcare managers identify areas in which their organisations can invest to gain a long-term competitive advantage over rivals (Buchbinder et al., 2019; Harrison, 2021). Overall, determining the areas of excellence to invest is a vital strategic planning activity that can be accomplished through systematic analysis of competitive rivalry, the healthcare regulatory landscape, technological innovations, health consumers, and the healthcare workforce.
The Importance of Acquiring Necessary Resources
Besides the areas of excellence to invest in and the organisation’s overarching vision, resources essential for strategy execution must be considered during the strategic planning process in healthcare. Strategy implementation is critical to organisational success, and this importance cannot be overstated (Buchbinder et al., 2019). To ensure successful strategy implementation, a strategic healthcare manager must acquire necessary resources (Ginter et al., 2018). Acquiring essential resources early assures that appropriate and sufficient resources are allocated to the right strategy implementation initiatives at the right time (Bright & Cortes, 2022; Ginter et al., 2018). Most importantly, resource acquisition is crucial for closing the gap between strategic plan development and strategy implementation and translating an organisation’s strategic goals into action to realise the desired future state. No matter how excellent they are, organisational strategic plans will remain mere writing with no impact on the healthcare organisation if resources necessary for implementation are not acquired (Ginter et al., 2018). That said, healthcare managers should ensure the availability of essential resources for optimal strategy execution and the realisation of their organisations’ directional strategies, including vision, mission, and strategic goals.
The Impact of Prioritising Critical Issues
Nevertheless, acquiring necessary resources can be challenging, particularly in situations where a healthcare manager or their organisation lacks embedded relationships that can facilitate resource acquisition. In such circumstances, prioritisation of critical issues becomes a fundamental part of the strategic planning process. In particular, prioritising critical issues is vital due to organisational budget/resource limitations (Buchbinder et al., 2019; Ginter et al., 2018). Often, healthcare organisations have limited resources, as evidenced by the persistent health workforce shortages in the UAE and other Gulf Corporation Council (GCC) countries, which have limited professional preparation/production capacity, a high dependence on expatriate human resources, and a soaring expat turnover rate (Paulo, Loney, & Lapão, 2019). Moreover, at any given point in time, a healthcare organisation has several and often competing projects and initiatives to undertake or execute (Buchbinder et al., 2019). Therefore, healthcare managers must engage in project/issue prioritisation to determine which existing and new programs, projects, or issues are the most urgent and important for their organisations to focus on, given the resources available. By prioritising critical initiatives/issues, a healthcare resource manager can allocate resources appropriately and effectively for successful strategy execution and the realisation of their organisation’s strategic goals, mission, and overarching vision.
The Importance of SWOT Analysis Before Strategic Planning
Above all, healthcare managers must conduct a priori SWOT (strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats) analysis to develop appropriate strategic plans that will make their organisations successful in the long term. Conducting a SWOT analysis before strategic planning is crucial since the assessment provides a foundation for strategic plan development (Buchbinder et al., 2019; Ginter et al., 2018). Buchbinder et al. (2019) assert that a priori SWOT analysis is vital for two primary reasons. First, the SWOT analysis provides a snapshot of how the healthcare organisation currently interacts with the external environmental conditions relative to its internal capabilities, constraints, and strategic goals, mission, and vision. Second, the SWOT analysis identifies external threats and opportunities that the healthcare organisation may want to address in future strategic efforts (Bright & Cortes, 2022; Buchbinder et al., 2019; Ginter et al., 2019). For instance, the analysis may reveal increasing life expectancy and a growing older population in the UAE, indicating a strategic growth opportunity for a healthcare organisation offering cosmetic surgery and other anti-ageing and longevity medical services (Almarabta & Ridge, 2021; Buchbinder et al., 2019). Therefore, the SWOT analysis may provide vital information to develop viable strategies that may be worthy of pursuit to make a healthcare organisation successful in the long term.
Furthermore, the SWOT analysis can be invaluable in identifying excellent areas of investment and creating a sustained competitive advantage for future organisational success. As previously discussed, analysis of external opportunities can enable a healthcare manager to discover areas of future success to invest in, such as, cosmetic surgery in a country or region with an ageing population (Buchbinder et al., 2019). Additionally, analysis of external threats can lead to the identification of risks to be avoided for organisational future survival and success. For example, the external assessment may reveal an upward nanobots trend, suggesting that a hospital should avoid investing in a robotic surgery program as a strategy for future success because nanotechnology would render robot-assisted surgery obsolete in the long run (Buchbinder et al., 2019; Siddiqui, 2021). Likewise, analysis of internal strengths and weaknesses could lead the healthcare manager to understand their organisation’s competitive advantages and disadvantages that may influence its strategic direction (Ginter et al., 2018; Siddiqui, 2021). Thus, a priori SWOT analysis could contribute to the development of effective strategic plans for a healthcare organisation to become competitively relevant and successful in the future.
Conclusion
A priori SWOT analysis is foundational to strategic planning in healthcare and serves as the pathway to sustained competitive advantage and organisational success in the long term. The analysis provides a foundation for strategic plan development, a primary strategic planning activity that partly involves defining and reviewing the healthcare organisation’s overarching vision and other directional strategies. Besides developing an overarching vision, a strategic healthcare manager must consider areas of excellence to invest in, which can be identified through external assessment that is part of the SWOT analysis and strategy development activities of the strategic planning process. Additionally, the strategic planning process involves strategy execution, whose success depends on the acquisition and availability of necessary resources. However, healthcare organisations may face challenges in acquiring necessary resources due to external forces beyond their control and could have multiple and competing strategic projects /strategies to execute. In such circumstances, the healthcare manager must engage in issue/strategy prioritisation to determine the most urgent and critical issues or strategies to focus on, given the limited resources available. Overall, prioritising issues, acquiring necessary resources, identifying strategic areas of investment, developing an overarching vision, and conducting a priori SWOT analysis are fundamental steps in the strategic planning process to assure organisational survival and success in the long term.
References
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