Strategic Planning

Strategic planning is a process in which a company, or departments in a company, define their strategy in accomplishing the things that they want to accomplish. Strategic planning has changed over the past couple years for the better. Before, a group of people would get together and chose one plan to accomplish of a couple years time. Now, a group of people get together and come up with multiple plans to accomplish the goals that they want accomplished in the next 12-18 months.

I liked this image because it shows a simple visual for the planning process. Strategic planning is more than just a plan that gets put on the shelf and forgotten when you are done writing it up. It is a plan than needs to be looked at often, assessed, and modified depending on how things are going.

After Class:

We talked a lot about the patient satisfaction scores that the congressmen have set up. Medicare is planning to start using these scores in October to base the funding/reimbursements they will give the the hospitals. 5 is "excellent" and anything else is pretty much a fail. The problem with 5 being excellent is that not many people use the word excellent in their vocabulary. As nurses if we use the word excellent while giving care the patients may be more prone to mark "excellent" on the satisfaction surveys.

With strategic planning there needs to be goals, short term and long term. If you don't have the short term goals to lead up to your long term goals then you may not make it to your long term goals.