SWOT Analysis
UOP
Professor
Student
05/08/22
SWOT Analysis
Stevens District Hospital
Strategic planning in healthcare involves creating long-term goals and objectives and initiating the steps to achieve such objectives. Strategic planners consider the available resources and know-how and commit the healthcare stakeholders to achieving the set targets. An effective strategic plan is based on the organization’s objectives based on customer needs. An organization’s situation in the market determines the strategic plan to set to achieve long-term goals and objectives. A SWOT analysis enables managers to analyze the organization’s position and determine the direction and resources required to meet various objectives. The analysis enables organizations to plan to capitalize on opportunities and address threats before they occur. SWOT analysis creates a clear view of the organization’s internal and external environments, strengthens the weaker areas, and identifies better ways to address patient needs and satisfy the clients. Effective healthcare SWOT analysis creates a foundation for business strategy because the managers determine the overall strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats.
Stevens District Hospital is a non-profit health facility with a 162-bed capacity. The hospital’s current performance analysis aligns with its mission and vision statements, which capitalize on improving care quality by offering exceptional services. The organization’s vision is to make the hospital the healthcare provider of choice by offering quality health services. The previous strategic plan review compared the goals against the progress towards achieving such goals. For example, they addressed the goal of increasing market share by recruiting only one family-practice physician to increase the primary care market. Steven District Hospital’s strategic planning scenario expresses the role of SWOT analysis in strategic planning.
The Purpose of Conducting a SWOT Analysis
The purpose of conducting a SWOT analysis in Stevens District Hospital is to identify the organization’s strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats, guide the managers in addressing what the organization lacks, and capitalize on new openings. SWOT analysis in healthcare enables the organization to keep things convenient to create a healthy and civilized society. SWOT analysis steps in healthcare begin with data collection and analysis to determine the position of the healthcare organization in the market, then organizing the data into four categories: strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats, to develop a matrix for each business option. Healthcare organizations depend on SWOT analyses to initiate a strategic planning process for effective decision-making. An effective SWOT analysis is obtained from an unbiased and straightforward approach. Analyzing plans rationally and understanding the needed change enables healthcare organizations to invest in an achievable strategic plan that addresses patient needs (Hill, 2019).
Conducting a SWOT Analysis Individually rather than with a Group of Stakeholders
Advantages of conducting a SWOT analysis individually rather than with a group of stakeholders include understanding the business better at an individual level, addressing threats, and taking advantage of organization strengths without external interference. Individual assessment enables the managers to develop a SWOT matrix to display the organization’s strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats in a worksheet. Disadvantages of conducting a SWOT analysis individually include lack of diversity, limited options, and inadequate resources and capacity to carry out the process. Individual assessment lacks competition of ideas and a sense of direction because the researcher is always focused on specific targets. Individual SWOT analysis may depict bias during data collection, analysis, and interpretation (Shah et al., 2021).
SWOT Analysis Worksheet Justification
Strengths and Weaknesses
Stevens District Hospital is well known, and its strong positive reputation beats all competitors in the healthcare industry. Patients perceive the hospital as the best healthcare provider and thus maintain loyalty because of the high-quality healthcare services. The hospital’s workforce is experienced and skilled, hence offering quality services to retain the existing customers and attract more. The continuing growth of chronic disease patients overwhelms the healthcare facility, and the available workforce is unable to meet chronic disease patients’ needs. Stevens District Hospital has not exploited all the marketing strategies and thus does not serve a wide range of customers as expected. The most common marketing deficiencies encountered by Stevens District Hospital include budget deficiency, data deficiency, and time deficiency.
Opportunities and Threats
Stevens District Hospital can adopt the new healthcare technology to enhance telehealth and serve customers from remote areas. The organization can capitalize on innovation and technology to reach more people and improve the quality of health services. Another opportunity is the organization’s ability to expand by opening more branches worldwide to meet new markets and embrace diversity. Stevens District Hospital threats include competition from the existing and new entrants in the healthcare industry. Government policies and regulations involving operation hours, taxes, and the legal requirements to operate a healthcare organization may threaten Stevens District Hospital’s activities.
Leveraging the strengths and opportunities to minimize threats and improve weaknesses would include investing in new technology and innovation and employing a knowledgeable and experienced workforce to improve healthcare services. Involving the stakeholders in essential decision-making processes would promote a sense of involvement in achieving specific healthcare goals and objectives.
References
Hill, B. (2019). Why Perform a SWOT Analysis. Small Business-Chron. com.
Shah, A. M., Yan, X., Tariq, S., & Khan, S. (2021). Listening to the patient voice: Using a sentic computing model to evaluate physicians’ healthcare service quality for strategic planning in hospitals. Quality & Quantity, 55(1), 173-201.
