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Strategic Planning for Physicians in the Age of COVID-19
By: Nick Hernandez, MBA, FACHE
The world’s shifting due to COVID-19 and physicians’ practices are unlikely to escape unscathed. You can prepare by initiating a strategic planning process.
The COVID-19 pandemic has hit physicians’ practices hard. I have many physician clients that have temporarily closed their practices to non-urgent patients. Others have put most of their patients on telemedicine visits. The business of outpatient medicine may have slowed considerably but it has not stopped completely. As the world gets a better grasp on the virus, it is safe to assume that your clinic will once again be busy. Consequently, in this age of COVID-19, some physicians are taking this opportunity of decreased patient load and fewer clinic hours to focus on strategic planning and other business initiatives they have been putting aside.
What is strategic planning?
Strategic planning is the process by which practice leaders determine what the practice intends to be in the future and how it will get there. To put it another way, they develop a vision for the practice’s future and determine the necessary priorities, procedures, and operations (strategies) to achieve that vision.
