Engage docs in business planning
by Kenneth H. Cohn
I felt honored to be asked to speak on mission-, vision-, and values-based business planning to approximately 100 physicians and allied healthcare professionals earlier this month. I summarized an article I had written in response to a chief operating officer who dismissed a practicing physician with an idea of how to shorten the time from presentation to diagnosis for patients with a prostate mass.
"Fine, now write me a business plan," the COO told the physician.
The physician did just that. Moreover, the business plan I helped him write became the blueprint for a multidisciplinary cancer center (Cohn KH, Schwartz RW. "Business plan writing for physicians." Am J Surg 2002;184(2):114-120).
With that in mind, I gave the audience of physicians and healthcare professionals four principal reasons to write a business plan:
To obtain funding for a new idea
To systematically analyze risks and alternatives
To showcase your accomplishments and knowledge
To maintain organizational health
The last one comes from a book written by Patrick Lencioni, entitled "The Advantage: Why Organizational Health Trumps Everything Else In Business." Lencioni wrote that organizational health is the key competitive differentiator and centers on four principal activities:
Building a cohesive team
Creating clarity
Over-communicating
Reinforcing lessons learned
The tie-in with healthcare is these activities are necessary for building a culture of collaboration from the...
Source: hospital impact - Category: Health Managers Authors: Wendy Johnson Source Type: blogs
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