Strategic Plan for Lake County Health Department - Coursework Example

? Strategic Plan for Public Health Organization Introduction A strategic plan is an organization’s way of formatting itsdirections and deciding on the allocation of its resources to pursue and achieve its strategy. For the organization to decide on its course towards the future, it has to identify and fully understand its status to decide on the potential channels through which its course of action is pursuable. Concisely, a strategic plan assists an organization to know what it has to do, who it is going to do it for, and finally how it is going to excel in its motives. In this case, the strategic plan that is developed is for the public health department of Lake County, Waukegan Illinois. STRATEGIC PLAN FOR LAKE COUNTY HEALTH DEPARTMENT Our Vision: Our vision is to promote and protect the health of Waukegan Illinois through assessment, policy development, and assurance. Our Mission statement: The mission of the Lake County Health Department is to promote and protect the health of Illinois residents through networking and collaborative actions that raise public awareness, build a constituency, and influences legislation and policies concerning public health issues affecting northern Illinois.  Our Values: We believe that services must be available without barriers. No resident should be turned away due to an inability to pay. We also believe in providing services in an environment of mutual respect, free of discrimination or any bias (Lakecountyil.gov, 2013). Our core competencies a) This department came into existence in 1956, established by referendum. Back then, it had a small bunch of people. However, today it boasts of over one-thousand professional assisting in all aspects of health, with an approximate working budget of seventy-million US dollars. b) Of all the human service providers under the Lake County, we are the biggest, with a twelve member Health Board governing this department. c) Nationwide, we rank among the top six of all two-thousand, eight hundred and sixty four health departments at the local level. d) We are members under the Northern Illinois Public Health Consortium, an organization that serves the Chicago city and the Winnebago, Mchenry, Kendall, Lake, Kane, Cook, Dupage, and Will counties in terms of complex health matters. The Environmental Scan. An environmental scan is the systematic way of finding out and interpreting the external environment to know the trends and factors of change, and their likely impacts on an organization in the future. Economic aspects Increase or entry of new security risks will affect the ability to respond to emergencies. This will affect this department in that we may not respond to emergencies resulting from crime and health risks as we lack the training of responding to security risks. Global economic transformation on Health care due to advance in competition may find workers not adequately prepared for new work processes. Impacts of globalization of Health care owing to economic integration and liberalization of trade globally will mean that workers have to deal with more potentially dangerous diseases. Social/ demographic aspects High risk groups such as foreign workers, older and new workers will affect the workplace. This is because language and cultural barriers, lack of training as well as the work organization mean a possibility in increase of injuries or work blunders. The raising of the educational and general worker bar in qualifying as a health worker means injury rates will reduce because of better training and more workers that are competent. Aging of the American population will affect the workforce in that chronic injuries and illnesses may increase. In addition, older workers take longer to recover from such. Legal/ policy aspects Increase in the enforcement of health and safety regulations by the government means pushing towards greater compliance that will help in better competence and more output. Smoking ban in workplaces and public spaces means workers will no longer get exposure to secondhand smoke. The government’s plans to ramp up the prevention of potential pandemics and other related health catastrophes means infection control is important in any healthcare setting. Technological aspects The introduction of innovations and human-machine interfaces will affect the department in that workers will risk mental and emotional strain due to these changes that may increase the complexity of equipment. Market analysis In Lake County Illinois, public health organizations are the major health care providers. However, these public health facilities are facing competition from players in the sector that are not part of the public health care system. There are a number of healthcare institutions other than the public healthcare institutions. The public healthcare institutions provide comprehensive medical care to patients. A number of community clinics and health centers that are not part of the public health care also provide health services to patients at low costs. The health sector in the Lake County is also open to new health care providers. This has allowed new facilities like the Abbot Laboratories to set up in the county. These facilities offer competition to the public healthcare facilities already in place in the county. Some private healthcare facilities provide Ambulatory Surgery services and mobile clinics to patients that do not require overnight stays in hospitals. These have managed to pull a number of patients away from the public healthcare system in the county. SWOT Analysis Strengths i. Our organization has easy and quick access to resources. ii. By offering some sponsored services, we attend to more Americans requiring them. iii. We have a large team of professionals averaging one-thousand. iv. We are under the Northern Illinois Public Health Consortium that specializes in vast areas of health care. We have sufficient financial support. Weaknesses i. Most people still hold to unhealthy lifestyles in observing culture. ii. Some people do not trust the quality of the services we offer free of charge. iii. Immobility limits our reach to those in need of health care services. Opportunities i. The local community leaders are focused and willing to help with sensitization programs. ii. The local people are open to, and welcome our education initiatives. iii. There is a national call for adoption of healthy lifestyles. iv. The Northern Illinois Public Health Consortium can provide any assistance we need. Threats i. Some people in the community do not have any commitment to change. ii. Cultural norms regarding drug misuse keep some people away. iii. The number of private health providers is increasing rapidly. Our strategic goals Our first goal is to ensure the people live in healthy ways that will protect them from the risk of ailments and other medical disorders. We are first going to invite the local community leaders and let them know of what the people will gain from our program. This is because they have the capacity to influence the people’s decision-making and if they understand that our healthy lifestyle program is for the people’s good, then it predicts easy reach to the people. The second strategy we shall employ is to get to the ground and hold sensitization campaigns and educate, inform, and empower them by assisting them to initiate the change in lifestyle. We are going to keep records of those who agree to our proposal and analyze the changes they observe in them. For a start, we can aim at obese children or alcohol addicts and lead them in reverting to healthy lifestyles. The pilot program will initiate in six months time and target approximately two-thousand Illinois residents. Our second goal is to assure the people of their health’s safety in our hands. We have to make sure the people have trust in our services and programs so they have no doubts when coming to us. For one, we are going to observe and enforce the laws and regulations that safeguard their health in every entity involved with public health. By so doing, we are going to have less cases of health disorders and also build the trust in those who use our services and find that we are competent and up to the task. The second strategy is to use our financial ability to update our technological aspect, thus provide faster, better, and more effective services to our people. To keep track of our goal, we can have a mechanism of getting feedback from the people regarding their satisfaction from us. We shall know what to improve on, or do away with. This objective will target most of those currently preferring private health providers who we approximate at two-hundred thousand. From this figure, we have an assurance of convincing about five-thousand in one year’s time. The Importance of a Strategic Plan According to Buchbinder & Shanks (2012), strategic planning in health care is a valuable tool in identifying the forces surrounding an organization’s operating environment, and finding means to adapt to them in order to achieve success rather than ignore them and be prone to organizational collapse. Of great importance is conducting a thorough SWOT analysis that helps in the realization of a realistic strategy. It is illogical for an organization to follow an objective blindly without knowledge of what lies ahead. In achieving a realistic goal, it is important for an organization to analyze on its key financial indicators as they greatly determine the direction of the strategy. When the strategic plan gets to implementation, monitoring performance against the targets in a given time regularly is paramount in determining its progress. The progress is more important than the resulting plan because it is the only way that an organization can improve or maintain an ongoing plan to achieve success (Buchbinder & Shanks, 2012). By combining these factors, an organization moves forward to its intended direction, with the ability to evolve over time to respond to changing circumstances such that it remains competent and executes its mandate of making profits. References Buchbinder, S. B., & Shanks, N. H. (2012). Introduction to health care management. Burlington, MA: Jones & Bartlett Learning. Lakecountyil.gov (2013). Lake County Illinois. Retrieved on 1 Nov 2013 from: http://www.lakecountyil.gov/Pages/default.aspx Read More