Developing appropriate strategies and an action plan for a healthcare organization

The Signature Assignment is designed as a final project capping off your learning and comprehension of the course. Using the concepts and framework of strategic planning and management, you will perform an environmental analysis, assess strategic priorities, and develop appropriate strategies and an action plan for a healthcare organization. Strategy is about making choices and evaluating trade-offs. Healthcare organizations operate in a very diverse environment, serving culturally diverse customers/patients and employing just as culturally diverse a workforce. What is “right” for one organization may not be right for another. Making the right choices and trade-offs is a challenge that healthcare administrators routinely have to undertake. Case – Build It and They Will Come? Mid-Atlantic Nursing Center (MANC) is an assisted living facility and nursing home in the Mid-Atlantic area. It also provides home healthcare to clients who prefer a home environment. The company bought two facilities a couple of years ago and spent the last two years focusing on its operations and the integration of the two new facilities. With the new addition, it now has two facilities in northern Virginia and one facility in suburban Maryland, which comprise part of the Virginia – Washington D.C. – Maryland Metro area. The company does not just focus on technical knowledge and skills when it hires people; MANC makes it a priority to hire people who are a good fit with its culture and structure. As a result, it has a stable workforce with a low turnover rate. With its steady operations and financial performance, it is now ready to enter another expansion phase.

Mary Ann Lewis, the CEO of the company, had a meeting earlier today with a benefactor, Mr. James Nguyen, who is interested in making an endowment in his mother’s memory. Mrs. Nguyen was a patient with Alzheimer’s who was receiving home healthcare from Mid-Atlantic Nursing Center before she passed away a few months ago. Mr. Nguyen is considering making an endowment to a healthcare facility and MANC is at the top of his short list. In exchange for an endowment to MANC, he would like MANC to open a facility to care for Vietnamese elderly people who have unique needs. Mary Ann Lewis has come in contact with some Vietnamese and knows that they are a very tight-knit community. Adult children often take care of their aging parents at home. Nursing homes carry a stigma and many Vietnamese consider them a place for people who are “abandoned” by family. Older Vietnamese often have limited English and the language barrier keeps them close to home. Working-age Vietnamese Americans who have full-time jobs and a family of their own find it challenging to care for their aging parents at home. Many cannot afford to hire a home health aide to care for their parents around the clock at home. While their parents reject the idea of being cared for in a facility by people whom they do not understand, young Vietnamese Americans are more open to the idea of having their parents cared for in a nursing home by professionals. Mr. Nguyen expressed a strong desire to help bridge the gap in caring for Vietnamese elderly people by providing them an environment close to a community that they are familiar with, with caregivers speaking their language. He is grateful for the care his mother received at home but knows that many Vietnamese elderly people cannot afford having the personal home healthcare service that his mother had. Being a businessman, he wants to make sure that the model is sustainable and that it is the right decision to make an endowment to MANC instead of the hospital where his mother received care throughout the years.