Strategic planning for clinical services: Hamot Medical Center

As a result of a two-day strategic-planning program, a hospital pharmacy department developed a five-year plan for addressing seven critical issues facing the department. The pharmacy department at a large nonprofit community hospital began a formal planning process in 1981 after concluding that the existing clinical services had been implemented in a haphazard fashion and had mixed results. The planning process began with a two-day planning program aimed at identifying issues facing the department, followed by the development of consensus about the most important issues and the development of action plans for dealing with these. The planning program consisted of four parts: presentations by hospital administrators, nurses, and the medical staff on future directions in their respective areas and pharmacy's potential input; presentations on the future of pharmacy from the perspectives of the pharmacy director and the responsible hospital administrator; preliminary recommendations related to drug distribution services and clinical services by two pharmacy consultants; and discussions of departmental management issues and key points identified in previous sessions. The department's progress in addressing each of the seven critical issues is described; most of the action plan has been completed. The consensus-building planning process allowed the department to focus on the most important issues, identify support and possible conflicts from others, and obtain administrative approval of the department's focus on patient-oriented services.