Strategic Planning Tools To Prevent The Failings In Hospital

In an institution where nurses, doctors, and other staff members are unable to provide adequate care for patients and are underpaid or unpaid, there is a poor planning or lack of planning by management. This, in turn, can be traced back to a bad or poor strategic plan. A company’s primary function is planning. It is about making decisions as to what you should do and what you shouldn’t do, what and how. Any organization should take this concept very seriously. It is as if an organization that doesn’t plan, is driving down a steep cliff. Failure to plan is to plan to fail. The strategic planning process is an extension to the regular planning. Strategic Planning refers to the systemic process that an enterprise uses in order to follow a pattern and achieve their goals. Only 7% (or fewer) of today’s employees are able to fully grasp their company’s strategies and goals, as well as how they can achieve and implement them. (Kaplan 2000). A strategic plan helps an organisation prepare for unforeseeable future negative events. The organization will also be able to perform well enough in order to avoid corporate failures or liquidation.

Mid Strafford Hospital was dissolved primarily because of the poor care or treatment they provided to patients. The hospital management could have avoided this dissolution if they had planned strategically and well. In reality, they were guilty of investing in a project that cost their employees and patients. For the Mid Staff Scandal to not happen again, strategic planning will be the best tool to guide and direct the direction and the vision of any organization.

There were different strategic planning instruments that could have prevented the failures identified in this report. The tools include: SWOT, performance metrics and others. SWOT analysis is a powerful tool for analyzing an organization’s internal and external environment. An organization’s external and internal environments are made up of opportunities and threats. Strengths and weaknesses form the organizational environment. The external environment can be used to gain strength in the internal environment, but it cannot cause a weakness. A hospital in the UK had the opportunity from 2006 to 2008 of achieving NHS Foundation Trust status. To ensure this they used the largest percentage of their financial resources. This led to the internal atmosphere becoming weaker as funds and resources that were meant for the hospital’s growth and development, were spent on the process of gaining the status. In the end, the hospital’s staff, which included doctors, nurse and other clinical staff, was underpaid. They were also not taken care of well, even before they started the project for gaining the foundation trust. The cost of a project should be weighed against the potential benefits. You should also consider the positive impact on the environment, and how that will improve. The hospital management did not take into account these elements and they ended up in the scandal. They were then subjected to many lawsuits and public inquiries into what happened in the hospital.

The hospital could have prevented the failures by using strategic planning tools such as performance metrics. This tool will set standards which the organization’s employees and management must follow. These standards will help the organization to achieve its goals. In the Mid staff Scandal it was found that the medical staff and nurses were very careless with the patients. Setting performance standards and metrics could have helped to control the hospital and its staff. Performance targets are a measure of non-financial performance that motivates employees. Because of the training, orientation, and incentives that they received from their organization, the employees are able to set goals for themselves which align with its goals. The organizations have an important role to play in helping employees set their own performance goals.

Balanced Scorecards are another tool to use for strategic planning. Robert Kaplan, David Norton and others were the first to develop it. It is used to measure performance in a strategic way. It’s a tool for controlling and monitoring the activities of your employees. The balanced scorescard combines a number of non-financial and financial performance measures in an easy to read format. The balanced scorecard ensures the board’s corporate strategy is in line with the goals and objectives of the organization. It would prevent hospital failures by ensuring that the hospital’s strategy is in line with its goals and objectives.

Visioning is another important tool in strategic planning. A vision is a way of looking into the future and working towards it. Visioning is a way for an organization to determine its future position (Drucker 2005). A vision is shared by an organization with its employees, as well as the entire world. The Vision of the organization would assist it in planning and working towards its goals for the future. The employees must be motivated to achieve the goals set by the organization. Through Effective Visioning they could have avoided the scandals and dissolved.

These tools of strategic planning are essential for any organization’s success. They show the organization’s staff the way to go in order for them to reach their goal. The Mid Staff Hospital could have created a welcoming environment for both its staff and customers (patients) with these tools. They avoided all public scrutiny of their activities.