Many practices overlook having a strategic plan. There are a variety of reasons behind why physicians tend to avoid creating such a plan, including:

• They consider it a waste of time, as their time would be spent better on patient care.
• It is too difficult to do.
• They do not see any value in it.
• They might not have the time.

However, there are many compelling reasons to engage in strategic planning. When building a house, is it not wise to have a plan in place beforehand, in order to have an idea of what you want the house to look like? Would you not want to have a plan in place for how specific tasks are to be accomplished and how long that might take?

The actual strategic planning process will be unfamiliar to most physicians. Rather than spending time inside the practice, caring for patients and whatnot, it is time spent on the practice; rather than patient care, the focus is on creating and implementing long term strategies that ensure the future sustainability of the business. Here are a few specific reasons you might want to consider investing time into making a strategic plan:

• Providing clarity and direction to the way you want to grow the practice
• Providing clarity and direction to the team
• Allows you to assess your strengths, weaknesses and opportunities
• Helps with decision making regarding where to commit resources
• Allows for easy adjustment if certain strategies are not in alignment with your overall goals
• You can use it to regularly assess the health of the practice

There are a few important aspects of any successful strategic plan. We have split these into 6 sections that should comprise your plan, along with a few simple questions that will help address each section, below.

Vision

This is the description of where you want the practice to go or what you are attempting to build at your practice. This should account for changes within the healthcare industry, both locally and internationally, so that you do not get left behind. This is a crucial aspect of the strategic plan, as it defines the ideal your practice is aiming to in the long term.

• What will the practice look like in ‘x’ years?
• Who will the practice be serving?
• What new services will the practice provide?
• How much will the practice grow?

Strategic Priorities

This part of the strategic plan outlines how you will go about achieving your vision. It should include up to 7 strategies (any more will split your focus too much, diluting the effectiveness of all) that ensure you stay focused. This is not a simple to-do list; it is a list of which areas of the practice require the most attention and resources to help you get where you want to be.

• What exactly does the practice need to do to be successful?
• What actions could help the practice attain greater success?

What current actions should be discontinued because they are not achieving the desired results?

• How can the practice increase efficiency?
• How can the practice improve patient outcomes?

Mission

This is where you define the purpose of your practice, and so this aspect will be at the very heart of the strategic plan. Try to keep this short and memorable. Rather than attempting to cover everything the practice does, try to capture the essence of the practice in a few short words.

• Why does the practice exist?
• What unique value does the practice provide?
• What is our purpose?

Core Values

The set of behaviors and values that help you remain consistent with both your vision and mission. These should cover both how staff interact with one another, and how they interact with patients in order to maintain a cohesive image of the practice.

• What values are most important to the practice?
• What behaviors do you want to avoid?
• What impression do you want to leave on patients?

Targets

Another important aspect of the strategic plan is that it helps measure success. In order to do that, it must include the metrics that track how you are doing at achieving your goals, and the targets that you have set for said metrics. To keep it simple, include no more than 8 metrics. Choosing which 8 to include can be quite difficult; these should be metrics that prompt immediate corrective action if their set goals are not being met. Try and link each metric to a specific strategy.

• What metrics will you use to measure success
• What metrics are important for decision-making?

Action Plans

Ultimately, a strategic plan is only as good as its implementation. You can have the most detailed plan ever created, with contingencies planning for every possible deviation, and it will be worthless if you don’t implement it correctly. That’s where action planning comes in; a plan that outlines exactly how you will go about implementing your strategic plan. Every strategy within the plan should have its own specific action plan.

• How will you accomplish each strategy?
• What areas must be prioritized?
• Who needs to be doing what in order to achieve your goals?
• What outcomes do you want to achieve?