Strategy 101 for Healthcare Practices
This article serves as a wake-up call for healthcare professionals to rethink their practice strategy, urging them to align their work with personal passions and market needs.
If you have been waiting for a time, or a sign, to rethink your practice, well here it is. The reality is you’ve likely become acutely aware over the last year of whether you are engaged in the work you are doing or whether you wish your days looked different.
A good question to ask is “Does my practice align with my personal passions”? If not, it’s time to rethink your practice strategy. Look, healthcare practices everywhere are crying out for strategic thinking – both from a delivery perspective, and also to reengage a deeply burned out and increasingly disengaged workforce.
I encourage everyone to think about their career and practice strategy. Remembering that status quo is not actually a strategy. And that there is a cost to doing ‘business as usual’. Once you are ready to stop going around and around in circles, it’s time to think strategy. Here is the most critical question you need to be able to answer if you’re a practice owner looking to pivot your business or staff looking to get re-engaged in your profession.
‘Why should someone choose you as their healthcare provider?’
An important note is that differentiation does not always need to mean a clinical niche. While it certainly can mean being best in class at travel health, cardiac care, or mental health or focusing on prevention or acute care, there are also many non-clinical ways you can differentiate from others and design a strategy for your practice.
For example, you can compete by differentiating your market by demographics such as age, gender, sexuality, or ethnicity. You can also compete on non-demographic traits such as lifestyles, attitudes, financial sophistication, and behavioural characteristics. Traits aside, your core strategy may even fall into other areas of excellence such as patient engagement, convenience, or patient experience.
Next, remember to check your assumptions. Are the barriers that have held you back actually barriers, or simply excuses? A lack of public funding does not need to hold you back, there are other ways to fund your practice. Blaming restrictive regulations? There are a LOT of innovative ways to practice within the regulatory frameworks that exist. Don’t know where to start? Embark on strategic networking and/or surround yourself with advisors or friends that have skills that are different than your own to fill in the gaps. Because adopting a new strategy means getting over entrenched mindsets.
So as you look ahead to five years from now, reflect on the following questions to get off on the right foot by thinking strategically:
Why should someone choose you as their healthcare provider? (And how does this differentiate from their other options?)
What stories do you want people to tell about your practice?
What would your practice look like if it was aligned with your personal passions?
Are you excellent at what you do, or just good enough? What are your distinctive areas of excellence?
What should your pharmacy practice look like?
What should it feel like to work there?
Lastly, strategy is made up of trade-offs. Strategic choice means growing in some areas while making distinct and explicit decisions to exit others. So, what strategic decisions can you make this year that your future self will thank you for?
Adapted for general health practices from publications written for Pharmacy Practice + Business magazine: https://www.canadianhealthcarenetwork.ca/strategy-101-your-pharmacy-practice-0