Ebener and Smith’s Strategic Planning Process



Ebener and Smith’s Strategic Planning Process

Noel Frias

University of San Diego

ENLC-557-02A-SP18 Strategic Planning and Management of Health Systems

Dr. Joseph F. Burkard, DNSc, CRNA

April 30, 2018

Ebener and Smith’s Strategic Planning Process

The first step in Ebener and Smith’s Strategic planning process is to initiate the interactive process. Ginter et al explained the development of strategic management had started in the business sector using a method of long-range planning. Hence, long-range planning begun in the 1950s used by many business organizations because operating budgets were difficult to prepare without some idea of what was the future prediction of sales and the flow of funds. This continues until Post-WWII were economic growth bloom and the demand for many products and services was rapidly growing. Later, the term strategic management was replaced by strategic planning because they assumed that the underlying long-range planning is that organizations will continue to produce its present products and services while they believe that matching production capacity to demand is the critical issue (Ginter, Duncan, Swayne, 2013).

As all strategies takes a long time to implement and many of these strategies are in long-range planning, time span is not the focus of strategic planning. Strategic planning team can comprise of a few key players- senior staff, top management, or a leadership team – are needed to provide balanced and informed points of view. It is indicative for the team to have a recurring group structured process to initiates a reconsideration, discussion, and documentation of all assumptions. It is also expected for the team to develop a process, so ideas can be discussed, conclusion can be reached, decisions can be made, and strategies can be adopted (Ginter, Duncan, Swayne, 2013).

The second step in Ebener and Smith’s strategic planning process map is to conduct an environmental assessment. In the continuation of this process, Change Healthcare will be the company of my choice to conduct and environmental assessment. To do this, I will be using a SWOT analysis (Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities, and Threats) to see how Change Healthcare is doing as a company. Before I illustrate the SWOT analysis, we need to refer to the stakeholder’s map to understand how Change Healthcare perform their responsibilities with other entities or organizations. In the strategic map, we can see that the Board of Directors has all the power in making major decisions for the company. In return, internal employees as well as remote employees for instance, contractual consultants, business analyst, sales executives or account executives and more report to their respective departments or division. Change Healthcare is nationwide and worldwide company providing the best healthcare technology to provider, payor, and consumer. The company has also responsibilities to comply with regulatory agencies like the Federal, State, and the Centers for Medicaid and Medicare Services (CMS). Furthermore, Change Healthcare has contractual obligations with different payors like United Healthcare, CIGNA, Blue Shield and Blue Cross, AETNA, several hospitals within the designated locations of the company’s business. Below is the SWOT analysis illustration for Change Healthcare.

| |INTERNAL |EXTERNAL |

|POSITIVE |STRENGHT |OPPORTUNITIES |

| |Outstanding IT Infrastructure |Increased managed care business |

| |Outstanding Healthcare Quality |Increased physician network business |

| |Strong Commitment to development of new and improved technology |Growing large hospital base, EHR, Billing, |

| |for healthcare industry |Revenue Cycle business |

| |Excellent Hospital Facilities | |

| |Strong Revenue Cycle Management | |

| |High Level of Organizational Efficiency | |

|NEGATIVE |WEAKNESSES |THREATS |

| |Lack of sales executives in the West Coast division |Reduced government reimbursement |

| |Lack of Radiology network in some parts of the East Coast |Competitors advanced technology |

| |division | |

There are always opportunities to be the best company out there. That’s why Change Healthcare is advancing the development of new technology solutions for healthcare organizations to utilized and maximize healthcare outcome.

The third step in Eberner and Smith’s strategic planning process map is described your culture – articulate the Mission and Core Values. Change Healthcare is currently developing their Brand. CHC vision is inspiring a better healthcare system. By developing different solutions in Healthcare and Data Analytics, Enterprise Medical Imaging, Payment Accuracy, Value-Based Payment solutions, CHC is sharing an inspiration to the healthcare industry. CHC values is comprises of pursue purpose, be agile, change innovation, earn trust, and include all. Furthermore, CHC Brand purpose is that the People Solutions organization enables, engages, and empowers all team members to maximize their potential and the company’s performance to inspire a better health care system. Change Healthcare is not only focus on their external clients but also their internal clients which are their employees. CHC brand positioning and brand essence is maximizing potential. What this means was that CHC is partner in every team member’s journey, providing tools, resources, and programs to help build careers and achieve goals while enabling the organization to achieve success through people who are enabled, engaged, and empowered to drive results.

Frame the Question and Identify the Strategic Areas is the fourth step of the Ebener and Smith’s strategic planning map. Ebener and Smith provided a good explanation why some businesses fall short when doing strategic planning. Planning too many strategic areas in the strategic plan and not realizing the action steps involved in the implementation of that plan. Ebener and Smith suggested that the number of strategic areas should be sufficiently challenging but not overwhelming (Ebener and Smith’s, 2015).

Change is a part of business development and strategic also describes something that is critical to an organization. It implies a need for change (Ebener and Smsith’s, 2015). To be strategic, there are four issues that need to be defined: comprehensive – it covers the landscape, critical – the impact must be crucial to the organization, changeable – it involves significant change in a positive direction; and controllable – it is within the control of the organization. For Change Healthcare, their business coverage is Nationwide including Puerto Rico, Worldwide, in Canada, Australia, Philippines, United Kingdom, and the Middle East. Having a new and improved technology introduce to the market, provide excellent customer service, professional and intelligent staff in areas of consulting, sales, finance, continuous improvement, clinical operations, brand marketing, and highly supportive executive management are all important and critical to the organization’s success. Changeable for Change Healthcare means a successful merger and acquisition. Recently, Change Healthcare merged with McKesson Corporation with now with combined employees totaling around 80,000 in the United States, Canada, Australia, Philippines and Europe. Unifying all countries as one company is a huge task, challenging and daunting for all staff involved in the integration process. Despite all these challenges, Change Healthcare has control over all aspects of change within all divisions. That includes, talent acquisition, business development, research and development, human resources, finance and more.

In the coming years, Change Healthcare will be introducing the Enterprise Blockchain for Healthcare Industry. This is going to be one big challenge for Change Healthcare.

Company leaders from top to bottom must work together to the success of the organization. Strategic planning requires the active participation of a good mix of leaders, followers, and managers because the strategic areas require the serious attention of each of them (Ebener and Smith’s, 2015).

Step Five of the Ebener and Smith’s strategic planning map is Answer the Questions – Develop Strategies. One of the strategic areas of concern for Change Healthcare is the development of Enterprise Blockchain. What is a Blockchain? A Blockchain is a digitized, decentralized, public ledger of all cryptocurrency transactions. Constantly growing as ‘completed’ blocks (the most recent transactions) are recorded and added to it in chronological order, it allows market participants to keep track of digital currency transactions without centralized recordkeeping. Each node (a computer connected to the network) gets a copy of the blockchain, which is downloaded automatically (Investopedia, 2018). Blockchain enable payers and providers to boost revenue cycle efficiency, improve real-time analytics, cut costs, and create innovative new services. As one of the largest independent healthcare IT companies in the United States, Change Healthcare services customers across the continuum of care, using its Intelligent Healthcare NetworkTM to process 12 billion healthcare-related transactions covering over $2.0 trillion in claims annually (Change Healthcare, 2018). Below are the action steps how this will be introduced to the public – to the healthcare industry.

Strategy:

Action Step #1:

Collaborating with customers and organizations such as The Linux Foundation’s Hyperledger project to make the benefits of blockchain technology broadly available and develop additional, advanced use cases.

Action Step #2:

Employ Hyperledger Fabric 1.0, an open source blockchain framework and one of the Hyperledger projects hosted by The Linux Foundation, as its foundation for blockchain application design and development.

Action Step#3:

Increase payment accuracy and revenue velocity, which will benefit payers, providers, and consumers themselves.

These are the latest in a series of strategic actions taken by Change Healthcare. Change Healthcare became the first healthcare IT vendor to join Hyperledger as a Premier member in May. Change Healthcare is a leading IT innovator to accelerate adoption of blockchain and other innovative technologies in the healthcare industry.

Step seventh of the Ebener and Smith’s strategic planning map is Vision Statement. Change Healthcare vision statement describes as inspiring a better healthcare system. At Change Healthcare, they have a great insight into their customers’ challenges, and they expertly use this knowledge to guide them as they establish trust and offer the most advantageous solutions to help them prepare for the future. At Change Healthcare they believe that their company vision and values will guide them to successfully deliver the best service to their customers. Through their vision and values, the are able to see what’s important to the customer and align their efforts. One of the foundations for growing the Change Healthcare relationships with their business partners is using the right approach at the right time. In order to get ahead with their competitors, they had to win over key decision makers using their consultative approach, amplifying their strong existing partnership, while demonstrating that they know them and the marketplace better than anyone.

Change Healthcare prioritized their focus on both internal and external clients. CHC addresses the critical improvement areas or engagement like connecting people to strategy (internal), Resource Alignment, and Career Development. Externally and technology development five to ten years from now, Change Healthcare will ensure the organization as it is now, and even more be on the top Technological Organization not only in the United States but globally. CHC will continue to create and develop new advance healthcare technology and challenge other competitive industry with their intelligently innovative development in the market place.

The eight steps in Ebener and Smith’s strategic planning process is Hold Yourself Accountable – Implement and Evaluate. Previously we had seen how Change Healthcare held themselves in the market as one of the key and major technological inventor and developer. Change Healthcare is very much positioned in the market.

Two years ago, Change Healthcare had merged with McKesson Corporation and the two companies acquired over eighty thousand employees here in the United States, Europe, the Middle East, Australia, New Zealand, and the Philippines. As with any merger and acquisition, changes on both side occur. A company reorganization is a change were many employees as not accustomed with. Due to the company reorganizational structure, Change Healthcare objectives for the next nine months is to clearly define the roles of each division in different locations. Continually define the staff role and responsibilities, what are the policies and procedures needed to be reevaluated to comply with State, Federal, foreign regulations, and other regulatory agencies. Migration of different systems from McKesson to Change Healthcare: People Soft (McKesson HR) to The People Connection and Workday (Change Healthcare HR); Kronos (time and PTO scheduling). To fulfill these objectives, the following action plans was in placed:

1. Develop and create a Change management timeline of the People Connection and Workday.

2. Schedule launch go-live timelines for Workday and full portal access.

3. Develop the Integrated Change Management plan for all team members and People Solutions Business partners (in support of targeted audiences), and for the Culture Ambassadors.

4. What team members experience at Go-Live?

a. Day One communication

b. Culture Ambassador Support

c. Go-Live Training Activities

d. Go-Live Orientation

5. The People Connection – U.S., Canada & Puerto Rico

a. Step 1: Determine best method to connect to the People Connection:

i. Web Inquiry

ii. Chat Inquiry

iii. Phone Inquiry

b. Step 2: If preferred, choose The People Connection Phone method:

i. Use the Service Center People Connection Password to authenticate your identity when prompted.

c. Step 3: Select the appropriate option from the voice activated Menu.

The migration is a long and tedious process. The top Executives along with their subordinates on both sides of the company will work together to complete the migration implementation. The IT staff along with the Human Resources staff will work the systems migration in phases and the Operations staff will work on the operational transfer from both companies. These whole processes will be measured by having The Culture Ambassadors as a coach to answer questions and direct Team Members to the right resources at the right time. Reinforce that additional or escalated support is provided by portal and Service Center which are a part of The People Connection when answers cannot be found in support materials. The Culture Ambassadors will provide feedback quickly to the Change Management and Communications team about Team Members’ and People Leaders’ experiences such as the intervention can occur if necessary.

Finally, Change Healthcare enable, engage, and empower all team members to maximize their potential and the company’s performance to inspire a better health care system through the strategic services and solutions within the three key areas:

• People Services – The delivery experts focused on flawless execution of key business-impacting services and solutions, focused optimizing service delivery, driving innovation, creating high customer satisfaction, and improving organizational and operational efficiency.

• Centers of Expertise – The innovative architects of short and long-term strategies that collectively drive business performance through people, enterprise frameworks, products, services, tools, and programs, with a focus on alignment consistency, quality, and continuous improvement to move the organization forward.

• Business Partners – Business aligned leaders who partner with the entire People Solutions value chain in order to influence and enable the overall people strategy to position the organization for success.

References

Change Healthcare, 2018. Explore our solutions. Retrieved from

Change Healthcare, 2018. Change Healthcare Introduces Enterprise Blockchain for Healthcare Industry. Retrieved from

Ebener, D. R., & Smith, F. L. (2015). Strategic Planning, An Interactive Process for Leaders. Mahwah, NJ: Paulist Press.

Ginter, P.M., Duncan, W.J., Swayne, L.E (2013) Strategic Management of Health Care Organizations San Francisco, CA: Jossey-Bass

Investepedia. What is Blockchain? Retrieved from

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