Healthcare Strategic Growth Blog

Advice from the Experts on How to Successfully Complete Your CHNA

By Lee Ann Lambdin 

2022 will be a big year for Community Health Needs Assessments (CHNAs). With the requirement that they are conducted every three years, this is the year for many hospitals to undergo a systematic collection, analysis, and dissemination of information about the health of their community.

With this in mind, we recently gathered some of the brightest minds we know - all experts on how to successfully conduct a CHNA: Dr. Stephanie Bailey, Amanda Ables and Carol Quest. Each of these industry healthcare leaders have been there, struggled with and come out the other side of at least one CHNA. (You can read full bios for each of our panelists at the end of this post. We also recorded the session, and you can listen to it here.)

How to Succeed in the Midst of Challenging Dynamics

By Lee Ann Lambdin

Note: This post is an excerpt from my SHSMD 2021 conference presentation. You can download the slide deck from this presentation here.

It’s true, the COVID-19 pandemic has been unlike anything our healthcare system has seen in recent history. In many cases, teams have been short-staffed and budget dollars reallocated. How can growth departments rebound from such challenges, often with no additional resources? By learning from those familiar with overcoming similar obstacles. 

Staying nimble and adaptable in the face of challenges is something many veterans know how to do well. Experienced leaders are accustomed to making adjustments when there are unplanned changes, budget reductions, or higher demands on the same few resources. 

Over the past year, I’ve worked alongside and advised numerous Stratasan clients as they’ve navigated shifting priorities and supported their staff through COVID-19 related challenges. In this post, I’ll share how I’ve seen these hospitals respond and how we can all learn from their experiences.

I’ll also share some of Stratasan’s story of rebounding from loss. I’ll provide some of the insights we’ve learned on how to focus priorities, make risk/reward calculations, and automate more.

By Lee Ann Lambdin

The Society of Healthcare Strategy & Market Development (SHSMD) annual conference is the biggest healthcare strategy conference nationwide. With the goal of changing and leading the future, it’s a must-attend event for healthcare marketing, communications, business development, and strategic planning professionals. Headed into its 25th year, SHSMD Connections 2021 is taking place in person on September 19-21 in San Antonio, TX, and virtually on October 20-21. 

SHSMD Connections is primarily focused on education and it provides many opportunities to learn best practices you can take home and share with your team. I’d like to personally invite you to the session I’ll be leading titled “Your Budget Has Been Slashed! Now What?” It’s taking place on Tuesday from 11-11:50 am. I hope to see you there!

This year, the conference theme is “It’s a New Future: Change it and Lead it,” based on how much has changed and will continue to change for those of us who work in the healthcare industry. With so many healthcare marketing, public relations and communications, and strategic planning professionals expected to be on-site, hours of educational sessions, and more than three hours with keynote speakers, this conference can easily be an enriching experience. However, it can also feel like you’re drinking from a fire hose.

The keynote sessions are always great, but this year I’m particularly excited to hear Derreck Kayongo, Entrepreneur, Global Soap Project Founder, CNN Hero, and Former CEO of the Center for Civil and Human Rights lead the opening talk. Our team was so looking forward to this event, that we decided to sponsor it, and will be offering free margaritas at our booth afterward. (Come say hello at booth #117!)

Tools to Revive your Planning Strategy 

By Lee Ann Lambdin 

With this final post in our series on how to adjust and renew your approach to strategic planning in the wake of COVID-19, we’re discussing what tools you can utilize to support your efforts. If you missed the first two posts, click here to learn how to effectively use 2020 data, and here for suggestions on how to refocus priorities upended by COVID-19.

If you’re at the point of revisiting your 2021 strategy, or taking steps to set the course for what strategy should look like post-COVID, then the tools shared in this post will help you along the way.

How to Refocus Priorities Upended by COVID-19

By Lee Ann Lambdin 

In our first edition of this blog series, Evaluating 2020 Data—Is It Useful or Not? we discussed how to approach and make sense of 2020 data and use it for strategic planning. In this post, we’ll build upon that idea and consider how strategic planners can adjust and refocus their priorities after a disruption of such magnitude as COVID-19.

How can strategic planners start again? By moving forward in the face of many unknowns and building a new strategy based on a year of data irregularities. The insights shared here will hopefully provide a starting point to do so.

Evaluating 2020 Data—Is it Useful or Not?

By Lee Ann Lambdin 

When 2020 budgets and strategic plans were set in the fall of 2019, no one could have imagined that by the following March, they’d be useless. Plans created for 2021 may be no better off, as they were established in the midst of a pandemic. How can strategic planners start again? What data and analytics should be used when 2020 trending is out of the question?

This is the first post of a series where we’ll discuss how strategic planners can regain focus, make sense of the data collected during COVID-19, and approach planning for the future. In this post, we’ll discuss how to approach 2020 data differently. In the next two posts, we’ll offer some actionable advice. 

Let’s dive in and talk about how to reconcile 2020 data and use it effectively in strategic planning.

Does your hospital have a good strategic planning process in place? How frequently is the plan updated and does it impact your day-to-day work and growth planning? Take this short quiz and find out how your team is doing with strategic planning!

With this quiz, you'll receive:

• Immediate feedback as to how good your team is at strategic planning
• Tips and best practices for improving your strategic planning process
• Insights about the value of strategic planning to meet growth, quality, service, and physician relations goals

Unprecedented Times Call for Unprecedented Community Health Needs Assessment Processes

By Lee Ann Lambdin

Every three years, non-profit hospitals, and many for-profit hospitals, take part in a months-long process called a Community Health Needs Assessment (CHNA). A CHNA is designed to identify the community’s greatest health needs before they develop an action plan to address them. Because of the COVID-19 pandemic, many hospital officials have been forced to adjust their approach to collecting and sharing CHNA data - introducing virtual CHNA gatherings to their mix. While it‘s not ideal to complete an entire CHNA remotely, thankfully it is possible. Stratasan had the opportunity to perform three fully remote CHNAs in 2020. In this post, we share more.

6 Tips to Maximize Your Time

By Lee Ann Lambdin

Virtual conferences are one of the many realities of COVID life. Businesses like ours are finding out how to navigate this new normal one virtual event at a time, collecting new ideas like souvenirs and learning from our mistakes as we go. 

As we approach the fall and a season of back-to-back events, we’ve compiled a list of strategies for how to get the most out of each one we attend. Some of our tactics aren’t much different from how we’d approach an in-person event, while others are altogether new and intended to address the unique opportunities presented by online interactions. In the post below, you’ll find our top six tips for maximizing a virtual conference experience.

How to Be More Insightful and Strategic with Data-Based Findings

By Lee Ann Lambdin and Forrest Rich

At the close of each quarter, strategic planners in the healthcare industry have the opportunity to present quarterly findings and progress updates to executive teams and upper-level management. These quarterly meetings often provide critical insight necessary for continued advancement in planned growth-related projects. They could also be the ideal time to present new ideas.

These meetings present an opportunity to share key findings to leadership that can change the course of how a hospital’s planning, marketing, and business development departments will function in the weeks and months to come. Therefore, it is critical that you're prepared to tell the most compelling story possible with the data you have on-hand.