What's your personal strategic plan?

Dear Medical Staff Leader:

Most hospitals have a strategic plan. You may even have helped develop that strategic plan. But do you have a personal strategic plan? Have you established your strategic goals?

Because of the increasing competition between hospitals and physicians, the hospital's strategic plan may not assist medical staff members in achieving their personal strategic goals. However, if the hospital's strategic plan seeks to accomplish its goals at the expense of physician goals, the plan is likely to fail.

Experienced medical staff and hospital leaders have learned this lesson. They recognize that effective hospital strategic plans invite physicians into a dialogue--a dialogue that requires physicians to bring their strategic goals to the table. Physicians who haven't identified these goals or taken the time to articulate them clearly to hospital leaders are at a disadvantage.

The best strategic planning requires medical staff leaders to sit down with hospital leaders and initiate a frank discussion of their mutual strategic goals. The following two questions must be asked:

• How can the hospital help physicians succeed in achieving their strategic goals?
• How can physicians help the hospital succeed in achieving its strategic goals?

To participate in this dialogue, you should reflect on your goals. Are you interested in increasing your income, spending more time with your family, establishing a less strenuous call schedule, or further developing your medical knowledge and skills? Perhaps you want to rediscover the joy of medicine--the calling that drew you to the profession.

Once you've understood your personal strategic goals, answer similar questions about your practice, especially if you participate in a group practice. Finally, answer the same questions about the medical staff as a whole.

Once you've spent time naming your personal, practice, and medical staff strategic goals, you are finally prepared to sit down with hospital leaders in a serious and fruitful strategic planning process. Because of the real and potential competition between hospitals and physicians, this won't be an easy discussion. But it's far better to get the issues out in the open than for physicians and hospitals to sneak around behind each other's backs. Both physicians and hospitals are more likely to achieve their strategic goals when they are openly discussed.

That's all for this week.

All the best,

Rick Sheff, MD