Integrated Business Planning for Healthcare
Any crisis, whether a global pandemic or one confined to specific patients or hospital networks, tests the ability of a healthcare organization (and especially its executives and managers) to quickly respond to events by seizing opportunities, addressing problems or mitigating risk. Managing through a crisis demands action-oriented planning, but many healthcare organizations find this to be difficult. Executives need—but too often are unable to get—precise and timely answers to what-if questions so they can confidently assess trade-offs when making decisions. As a result, they have difficulty aligning the plans of various operating groups to respond to changing circumstances in a coordinated fashion. And the leadership and operations team cannot quickly translate those plans into a unified approach. The value of action-oriented integrated business planning (IBP) is most apparent in a crisis, but it is equally important to the success of a healthcare organization under any circumstances.
Ventana Research uses the term “continuous planning” to describe a high participation, collaborative approach of IBP that connects and aligns operational plans with financial plans and forecasts, using technology to eliminate silos and enable frequent, short planning sprints. Fast planning cycles make it possible for healthcare organizations to achieve greater agility in responding to market or competitive changes, and plans can be more accurate and relevant because they are refined more frequently. An ongoing, collaborative dialogue about achieving objectives brings together finance, line-of-business managers and executives to promote ongoing organizational alignment and buy-in to decisions. And continuous planning enables planning and analysis groups to expand and redefine their role into one that is more strategic and more closely aligned with operations.