Strategic Planning at Cancer Centers

This article was authored by Hamilton et al (2017) as a summary of a five-year strategic plan developed by Princess Margaret Cancer center. The article is unveiling the strategic planning process aimed at enhancing the performance of the Cancer center through providing strategic goals and guidelines for implementing the goals. Among other issues discussed, the article outlines strategic leadership, resource mobilization and utilization as well as employee contributions in achieving the set strategic goals.

Focus is given to the process of the development of the strategic plan. The situational analysis model is adopted in guiding the development of the strategic plan covered in the article. This model analyses both internal and external factors and their impact on the operations of an organization. The authors identify internal factors such as technological development, staff trainings and educational programs, engaging with stakeholders and enhancing clinical expertise as crucial in achieving the strategic plan goals. Additionally, external factors established by the authors include enhanced international measures in fighting cancer, and investments in cancer treatment programs by other medical centers as sufficient factors for development of the strategic plan. The strategic plan outline involves information on the history, current opportunities, precision medicine and integration of education and research.

It is undoubted that the authors set a clear guideline in the development of the plan. This is guided by the step by step procedures involved in the strategic plan development. From the article, the strategic plan was developed in four phases which are planning, data collection, data analysis and the launch of the strategic plan. While the plan covers the objectives and provides the roadmap for achieving these objectives within the set timeline of 5 years, I perceive that the plan lacked a strong foundation. In my opinion, since this plan was proceeding after a previous one, SWOT analysis methodology would have been developed in that, the plan would have been developed by exploring the strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats encountered in the previous plan. This would have enhanced continuity between the two strategic plans and would have been easy and cost effective to develop the plan.

In this case, some of the actions conducted during the development of this strategic plan such as hiring external consultant may have been avoided with the SWOT analysis approach. The authors expressed in the article that this strategic plan only considered the accomplishments of the previous 2011-2015 plan. Another aspect that was apparently overlooked, in my opinion is the patient experience with the health care offered by the cancer center. Patient experience is a growing concern in healthcare that requires that healthcare especially for chronic medical condition to be focused on the needs of the patients. Since this is a strategic plan, it would have been prudent to focus on patient centered care as one of the main objectives of the strategic plan. Investing in technologies and having well trained workforce would only serve the cancer center better if the radiation medicine and other cancer care services were focused on the patient.

Reference article

Hamilton J, Foxcroft S, Moyo E, Cooke-Lauder J et al. (2017): Strategic planning in an academic radiation medicine program. Curr Oncol. 24(6):e518-e523