Healthcare Strategic Growth Blog

The Secrets of the DIKW Pyramid

By Jason Moore

Have you heard of the DIKW pyramid?  If not, you’re not alone. But if you’re up for a refreshing shift in perspective on how to make data-driven decisions, then read on.

Within the healthcare landscape, change is constant. As a result, growth departments — whether they be strategic planning, marketing, business development, or physician relations — must make informed, data-driven decisions that can keep pace with the rate of change. Stratasan views the DIKW pyramid as the best and most philosophically accurate way for leaders to make these decisions.

Drive More Patient Volume and Improve Your Bottom Line

By Jackie DeGroat and Megan Reeves

Here’s something you already know: hospitals need physicians in order to drive patient volume. Opening a new service line or expanding an existing one is dependent on successful physician recruitment.

What you may not fully understand is how to involve physicians in a way that engages them at a strategic level. It can be a challenge to incorporate their input, even when you know it’s important to do so. And it can be a particularly difficult prospect for hospitals who have not prioritized this approach in the past, as it means a change to the status quo.

But the reality is that involving physicians in your planning can improve their connection to your hospital and their loyalty to your mission, vision, and values. It can also increase their buy-in, leading them to be more productive and willing participants in service line growth. Additionally, physicians have a firsthand understanding of your patient’s needs. Their input into your strategic growth strategy can lead to better alignment with the needs of your market.

Heed these Warning Signs and Prevent Costly Consequences

By Sean Conway

When signing on with an outside partner for strategic growth insights and support, there are a variety of factors to consider, and a few warning signs to heed. Some examples include:

• Will your vendor be a good strategic growth partner for your specific needs?

• Should you choose the partner who can do a little bit of everything, but may not specialize in one area? Or go with multiple partners, each with their own specialty?

• Is your vendor fully HIPPA compliant in how they use patient data?

While there are many variables to consider, in this post we focus on what to look out for and what to avoid. If you notice any of these red flags as you walk through the evaluation process with a new partner, take note, as it could be a warning sign for a less-than-stellar partnership down the line. Any one of these issues could lead to costly consequences that may not seem important early on, but could cause major (and expensive!) problems for your hospital as the relationship progresses.

A More Efficient Way to Boost Revenue and Attract Patients

By Tony Camarata

Historically, market performance has been measured through market share, a single snapshot of patients treated. While market share can be used to measure market position, it fails to deliver the complex intricacies of patient choice, which are vital to improving care delivery. Hospitals planners need better visibility into the full continuum of patient choice in order to deliver the right services for their patients.

Share of wallet provides this added visibility by not only showing the patient treatment snapshot, but also showing everywhere else your patients are utilizing care. These insights will lead your team down the path of determining if you can provide that same care to your patients and potentially attract them to choose your hospital over your competition.

Key Takeaways from the Innov8rs Conference

By Stephanie Johnson, Hank Neuhoff, and Morgan Atkins

We understand how difficult it is to keep pace with developing technologies, changing care trends, and evolving patient needs. Yet we also recognize how paramount change is to progress. We strive to be trailblazers in the healthcare space, developing innovative tools and services that address our clients' growth goals. In an effort to support our own continuous improvement and inform how we can more effectively support our clients, a group of us traveled to Miami to attend the 2019 Innov8rs conference.

Reduce Friction and Promote Teamwork

By Carly Farlow and Chris Graffagnino

As mentioned in a previous post, our team at Stratasan strives to be trailblazers in the healthcare space, developing innovative tools and services that address our clients' growth goals. The best way we can effectively lead our clients and provide value is by innovative thinking that challenges the status quo. And the only way to be innovative and develop products and services that truly make an impact is through cross-department collaboration—uniting the best thinking from every team.

Effectively Leverage Your Data for Maximum Growth Insights

By Angelo Vibar, Tony Camarata and Dave Sellers

Are you asking the wrong questions of the right data; or the right questions of the wrong data? Most healthcare strategic planners understand the value of using data for informed decision making, but many don’t know how to effectively use data—or when to acquire new data—to find the answers they need.

When looking to assess market share or performance, you may feel the datasets you already have access to will provide the answers you need. But what if you don’t have the right data to answer these particular questions? Using the wrong data, you may miss important segments of your population in your analysis and risk using out-of-date or inconsistent data. A new data set all together may be needed to properly address the issues at hand.

There is also great value in being able to trust your data so you can be confident in your decision making. As hospital leaders face mounting financial and operational challenges, it’s critical to have tools that can consolidate and visualize healthcare market data—offering a source of common truth—and speed up the data analysis process. A source of common truth can unify departments around growth goals, metrics, and reliable market intelligence.

Identify How Stratasan’s Software Can Most Effectively Meet Your Needs

Is your team equipped with the right tools to analyze data and execute your strategic plan? Do you have access to the expertise you need when looking to identify growth opportunities? Take this short quiz and identify which tools and services can improve your team alignment and promote strategic thinking.

With this quiz you'll receive:

• Immediate feedback about which of Stratasan's software and services are the right fit for your needs
• Answers about where to turn for improved data intelligence
• Insights about how to more effectively align your team and see growth results

Successfully Execute Your Strategic Planning Initiatives

By Megan Reeves

If you’re like many Americans, you made a few New Year’s Resolutions last month [I’m drinking more water this year, for what it’s worth] and you’re likely still trying to hold onto them. The struggle to keep our resolutions is very real. In fact, 80% of resolutions don’t make it past the second week of February.

With this reality in mind, it may be time to consider a different proposition. Instead of making resolutions, what if, instead we set goals? Goals are much more actionable and specific — which is what makes them more effective — whereas resolutions tend to be broad and vague. The argument for goal setting has its place in our personal life and is entirely transferrable to the work arena as well. Specifically, for hospitals and health systems who have a strategic plan in place for 2019, goal setting will be a vital part of your success.

Execute Your CHNA and Improve Community Health

By Lee Ann Lambdin

One sentence in the Federal Register requirement for CHNAs (page 19, section 6, paragraph E) calls for “a description of the resources potentially available to address the significant health needs identified through the CHNA.” While this one line may seem innocuous at face value, after 9 years of performing CHNAs, I’ve seen this one little sentence take on significant importance in improving the health of communities.

Initially, this requirement was seen as just that, a requirement. However, communities are now seeing how little cross-communication of community resources takes place and how critical this communication is to providing valuable health resources to their residents. Hospitals and communities are beginning to use the Community Asset Inventory as an online catalog for community members who need access to practical, helpful health resources.