Section 1: Summary of the Issue

To prepare:

• Consider the information on strategic planning in the Learning Resources.
• Review any feedback you received from your Instructor on your Module 1 Assignment. If necessary, continue to refine your focus to clarify the strategic plan issue.
• To prepare your Summary of the Issue section, proceed as follows:
  • Investigate the background related to this issue. What conditions have contributed to this situation? Is there data (beyond what you identified for the Week 2 Discussion) that should be examined?
  • Conduct research to assess what has been attempted in the past, by various individuals or organizations, to address this issue.
  • Think about any broader issues that should be examined to better understand this issue. For instance, consider economic, political, and/or social considerations.

To complete:

Write a 2- to 3-page summary of the strategic plan issue. Include the following in your summary:

• The strategic plan issue and how the issue’s need is evident in the group or organization.
• The mission and vision of the group or organization. (Note: Be sure you have reviewed and implemented feedback from your Week 4 Discussion 1: Mission and Vision Statements.)
• Background, including:
  • Data from historical analysis and forecasting to support the need for the plan
  • Evidence from the literature to support the need for the plan
  • Previous attempts by various individuals and groups to address this issue
  • Stakeholders that should be included in the strategic planning process

Section 2: SWOT Analysis

To prepare:

• Conduct a SWOT analysis for your Strategic Plan, reviewing and incorporating any insights you have gained from feedback from Week 4 Discussion 2: Preparing for a Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities, and Threats Analysis. Identify two strengths, two weaknesses, two opportunities, and two threats that warrant attention relative to the identified strategic plan issue.
• Reflect on how you distinguished between weaknesses and threats and consider whether the threats or weaknesses also pose opportunities.

To complete:

Write a 2- to 3-page summary that conveys the results of your SWOT analysis. Include:

• Two organizational strengths
• Two organizational weaknesses
• Two market opportunities
• Two environmental threats
• An explanation of whether the threats and/or weaknesses may also pose opportunities

By Day 7

Submit the following sections of your Strategic Plan, using the provided template:

• Section 1: Summary of the Issue (2–3 pages)
• Section 2: SWOT Analysis (2–3 pages)

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Solution

Summary of the Issue

          The summary of the issue paper will evaluate Section one and two which assesses the strategic plan issue summary and SWOT analysis.  

Section One: Strategic Plan Issue Summary

Organizational strategic issues are the critical challenges in an organization that requires informed decision to clarify future events. Hence, when the challenges affect the organizational mission, the organization management needs to develop an effective solution to prevent accelerating the situation. Hence, in part one of the strategic plan issue summary, the main evaluation will be on the strategic plan issue and the issue evidence, mission and vision of the group, and the issue background summary.

The Strategic Plan Issue and the Issue Evidence

The issue that requires the healthcare organization’s attention is funding and management of the organization’s branches. The issue has been of great concern since, if not well-looked into by the organization’s management, it may paralyze its operation, thus risking its competitive advantage and sustainability. According to Ginter et al. (2018), healthcare management should always be vigilant to handle issues affecting their organization when a crisis arises to avoid escalating the problem to an ungovernable situation. For instance, management and funding are crucial since they affect the nursing staff and patients who rely on its services. The nursing staff’s main effects include poor salaries, late payment, and insufficient health insurance cover, which are part of funding issues. On management issues, one will find that the employees face burnouts as they try to put things together, thus risking their mental health. Moseley III ( 2017) posits that organizations should always have greatly motivated their nursing staff to promote healthcare workers’ productivity.

However, it is most likely that when healthcare workers face payment issues and unending workload, their morale fades out; thus, they will fail to help healthcare attain its sets objectives and overall goals. For instance, the healthcare organization’s aim while introducing several branches was to increase their efforts to serve their target communities. In that case, when these branches face issues with management and funding, the healthcare providers will face difficulties trying to help the healthcare facility provide quality care and satisfactory patient services. On the same, patients also get affected since they may be required to seek services elsewhere since when healthcare faces funding and management, the patient receives unsatisfactory services. For example, the patients are most likely to face insufficient medicines and lab services which might also risk the healthcare facility’s reputation.

Mission and Vision of the Healthcare Organization

The healthcare organization’s mission and vision statements for the strategic plan are:

Mission: Our Mission is to boost integrity, inclusivity, compassion and provide a more people-centric environment.

 Vision: The organization’s vision is to provide unmatched leadership that will boost the organization’s sustainability and competitiveness in offering quality healthcare and patient-satisfactory services.

According to Elrod et al. (2017), mission and vision statements enable healthcare organizations to align their activities towards achieving the set organizational goals. The issue of funding and management revolves around people making it necessary to have a mission and vision statement that focuses more on being people-centric. Such an approach will help the organization achieve its competitive edge considering that funding and management require a careful approach since in as much as the organization will fail to reach its goals, it corrected seamlessly by setting a positive perspective to its people. As a result, if the organization management will find it necessary to conduct an organizational restructuring and lay off, they have to ensure that they have considered the best approach towards it by engaging in people-centric leadership.

The Issue Background Summary

The Healthcare industry is experiencing changes that might lead to most healthcare organizations’ downfall if not well-thought-of. According to Shahid et al. (2019), most healthcare issues arise from healthcare cost rise and spiraling of healthcare equipment as most organizations have to keep up with the new technology. As a result, Moseley III ( 2017) asserts that most healthcare organizations have been engaging in numerous change management to ensure that their organizations keep up with the emerging changes to avoid disrupting their services completely. In that case, the healthcare organization had a good initial plan concerning how they can help the communities they serve to achieve better health by increasing their health centers for accessibility. However, they did not consider possible industry changes and curb the situation. As a result, when the healthcare cost started to surge, they did not have a backup plan to design effective ways to fund and manage these additional branches. As a result, the healthcare workers and patients started experiencing unexpected disruptions, which also has been impacting the organization’s reputation even for the operational branches. For instance, due to late payments, the organization has encountered numerous resignations from the healthcare providers seeking employment from their competitive partners. Also, the patient numbers are declining, affecting healthcare sustainability and position in the market. Hence, coming up with a strategic plan will help secure its position in the healthcare market and boost its sustainability. However, there will be a need to ensure that the organization realizes factors that can optimize and opt-out to reclaim their initial position and service to their target community (Moseley III, 2017). In that case, the main stakeholders involved in the strategic plan include healthcare providers, nurse leaders, managers, and change expert personnel to help healthcare management make informed decisions.

Section Two: SWOT Analysis

Healthcare organization requires conducting an analysis regularly to identify their position and factors that might risk their sustainability and competitive advantage. Bhaduri (2020) accentuates that SWOT analysis is the best approach by healthcare facilities since it points out the organization’s weaknesses and strengths to help them formulate means to be more productive for sustainability purposes. Also, through SWOT analysis, the healthcare organizations manage to identify opportunities and threats, which help them design ways to increase their competitive edge. Therefore, for the organizational strategic plan, there will be the identification of two strengths, weaknesses, possible threats, and opportunities.

Strategic Plan Strengths

The main strengths include integrated teamwork and medical record system and focus on innovation and research. For example, the healthcare organization has an existing patient scheduling system to help identify laboratory tests, doctor’s comments, and patient availability. Such information will be crucial since it will help acknowledge how funding and management affect the healthcare branch medical centers’ operations. In addition, Healthcare organization indulges in education and research activities, which will help identify the main factors affecting the organization’s management and funding procedures. In such a case, there will be a comparison of the existing literature and the organization’s situation on the best way to handle the issue at hand using evidence-based practice.

Strategic Plan Weaknesses

The strategic plan’s main weaknesses include funding management and intensity care variation. For the funding management weakness, the weakness is essential to note since, without proper funding management, there will always be instances of conflicts within the organization and the stakeholders. Also, through the intensity care variation, the different healthcare branches may differ in terms of the funding and management consistency, thus failing to give the bigger picture of the current funding and management issue.

Strategic Plan Opportunities

The main opportunities for the strategic plan success include different care center branches and research translation into practice. For instance, the existence of different care centers will help widen the strategic plan scope for better results. In addition, the research translation into practice will also help generate room for discoveries on how to solve the funding and management issues.

Strategic Plan Threats

The strategic plan’s main threats include stakeholders’ failure to cooperate and the lack of highly qualified change experts. For instance, the stakeholders may fail to cooperate due to unsettled financial conflict, while failure to have a qualified change expert may complicate the initial issues.

Threats and Weaknesses as Possible Opportunities

A threat or weakness poses limitations, defects, or faults that derail a project’s goal or objective. On the other hand, Bhaduri (2020) states that opportunities represent all favorable conditions within an organization environment that can help achieve and improve the organization’s status. However, there is a possibility where with critical examination, change experts can make the organization’s weaknesses and threats be a part of the opportunities. Wang (2019) state that healthcare management can realize effective opportunity by considering organizational threats and weaknesses as the potential opportunities. From the strategic plan, the main weaknesses include funding management and intensity care variation, while the threats include stakeholders’ failure to cooperate and lack of highly qualified change experts. One way to turn these weaknesses and threats into opportunities is to recognize and acknowledge their availability. The healthcare managers should analyze the healthcare organization situation to foster the creation of an informed market plan. Such acknowledgment helps an organization prepare fully to learn more about the weaknesses and threats and design ways to improve them.

There is always a need to leverage them on other people, to turn them fully into opportunities. Hence, the strategic plan’s weaknesses and threats will help the healthcare organization management restructure its brand value proposition and organizational campaigns to help them receive grants and potential partners that will help fund some of their services. Such steps will help the organization manage to plan on fund allocation and keep aside emergency funds if the potential partners withdraw their funding to maintain the healthcare branches’ sustainability. Also, on matters concerning the variation of care intensity weakness and failure to have a qualified change expert threat, the organization can use it as an opportunity to book for a benchmarking period with an organization that offers similar services and which tends to be more successful. Such opportunities will help learn different techniques to help the organization achieve success in its strategic plan. Hence, despite the weaknesses and threats during the strategic plan, they still pose an opportunity for our healthcare organization to curb the funding and management issues experienced by its branch health centers.

Conclusion

Through the summary of the strategic plan issue and SWOT analysis, it is evident that it is possible to achieve the project’s goals and objectives.

References

Bhaduri, S. D. (2020). United States of America: Health Care System Overview and SWOT Analysis. The Indian Practitioner, 73(9), 46-49.

Elrod, J. K., & Fortenberry, J. L. (2017). Centers of excellence in healthcare institutions: what they are and how to assemble them. BMC health services research, 17(1), 15-24.

Ginter, P. M., Duncan, W. J., & Swayne, L. E. (2018). The strategic management of health care organizations. John Wiley & Sons.

Moseley III, G. B. (2017). Managing health care business strategy. Jones & Bartlett Learning.

Shahid, N., Rappon, T., & Berta, W. (2019). Applications of artificial neural networks in health care organizational decision-making: A scoping review. PloS one, 14(2), e0212356.

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