Healthcare Strategic Planning

Our healthcare system has reached a critical turning point creating a gap between the health care services currently avaible and the services necessary to meet consumer’s health needs. Consequently, industry leaders are frantically searching for ways to close the gap amidst the multitude of changes impacting the healthcare industry. With nurses now accounting for the largest number of direct care providers within most healthcare institutions, attention has been turned to the role the profession of nursing can play in the future of healthcare delivery. As industry leaders begin to understand the value that nursing brings to the viability of an organization, nurses are called upon to take active roles in strategic planning activities on the unit,

It identifies an organization’s philosophy, mission, vision, goals, and measures with which they will assess performance (Kelly & Tazbir, 2014). Furthermore, it explains the organization’s plan for attaining goals and details how an organization will shift direction to meet new goals as well as allows the organization anticipate what their future needs will be (Fry & Baum, ). Through various strategic planning methods such as as the Stengths Weakness Opportunities Threats (SWOT) assessment, community and stakeholder assessments, focus groups, advisory boards, literature reviews, surveys, and interviews organizations obtain the insight necessary to develop and realize their plan (Kelly & Tazbir,

Young, Landsorm, Rosenberger, Guidroz, and Albu (2015) call attention to the Institute of Medicine’s/Robert report The Future of Nursing: Leading Change and Advancing Health and the Advisory Board’s report, Perfecting the Patient Care Services Strategic Plan: 13 Key objectives for Health Care’s Changing Future. These reports advise leaders to align themselves with healthcare’s reformation and push leaders to look toward the nursing profession to find solutions for many of issues plaging organizations