Does the current economic environment place greater emphasis on and need for strategic planning?
Given the rapidly changing nature of the health care environment, strategic planning has always been a particularly critical endeavor for hospitals. In difficult economic times, like the present, strategic planning assumes even greater urgency. The essence of planning is the allocation of scarce resources to initiatives of greatest importance at the expense of other activities of lesser importance. When resources are scarce, and the risks presented by the environment are greater, appropriate resource allocation assumes even greater importance-in essence, in this type of situation, the number of bets you can place tend to be fewer, so maximizing the potential for success becomes more important. What are the most important elements of a hospital’s strategic planning process? All elements of the strategic planning process are important, but there are several activities that merit particular mention for their significance in the process. These include: the performance of an environmental a
