How to Develop a Robust Healthcare Strategy in 2025
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At EnticEdge, we are healthcare and wellness business consultants dedicated to helping companies clarify and align around their competitive advantage, which we call your authentic edge! Our team brings 30+ years of healthcare expertise in strategic advising, value mapping, business consulting, client experience, team and cross-departmental alignment, and more, all tailored to helping teams achieve mission-driven growth.
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Gold-medalist Olympic rowers know that success hinges on precision and unity. Individual skill matters, but it's the synchronized effort of the entire crew that propels the boat to victory.
Your healthcare organization is no different. From decision-makers to clinicians, every team member is part of your crew. However, individual talent alone won't achieve your goals or outpace competitors, especially in today’s competitive healthcare landscape where healthcare strategy and integration are key.
Success requires a unifying force: a clear, comprehensive healthcare business strategy.
What Is Healthcare Strategy?
Simply put, a lean strategy in healthcare is a roadmap to reach your organization’s goals. It spans all aspects of your company, including growth, market share, operational excellence, and patient care.
Essentially, a good healthcare strategy bridges the gap between where you are now and where you want to be in the future, outlining specific plans for each goal.
Why a Strong Strategy in Healthcare Matters
A strong healthcare strategy means alignment and unity through every layer of your organization, from the board to the clinical care team to the marketing department.
Without it, decision-makers operate with siloed perspectives, meaning they make decisions based on what one department understands. This inevitably results in disjointed actions across sectors, significantly impeding progress.
In contrast, healthcare strategy planning puts everyone on the same page. Like an olympic rowing team, every member is working in sync to cross the finish line in first place.
How to Develop a Strong Healthcare Strategy
We recommend the following process for developing your healthcare strategy.
Assess Current State
It's tempting to jump straight into the "goals" piece of your strategy. After all, deciding where you want to go is exciting and energizing. But it’s crucial to first make sure everyone understands where you currently are. This way, you'll have a clear idea of what it takes to reach your destination.
A gold standard for assessing your current situation is to use a SWOT analysis, highlighting your organization’s strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats. Let’s go through a few SWOT healthcare strategy examples for a regional hospital system:
Strengths
Strong reputation for quality care in cardiology and oncology
Modern facilities with state-of-the-art equipment
Robust network of primary care physicians
Weaknesses
Underperforming emergency department with long wait times
Limited telemedicine capabilities compared to competitors
Limited presence in rural areas of the region
Opportunities
Possibility to acquire struggling smaller hospitals in nearby counties
Government initiatives supporting healthcare IT modernization
Expansion into telemedicine to reach underserved areas
Threats
Increasing competition from new specialty clinics in the area
Shortage of specialized medical professionals in the region
Economic downturns affecting patient ability to pay for services
While a SWOT analysis gives you a bird's-eye view, don't stop there if you have the time and resources. For a deeper understanding, interview your stakeholders, end users (patients, clients, or customers), and team. This will reveal hidden pain points and optimization opportunities for your healthcare growth strategy that may not be apparent at the top level.
Define Goals and Priorities
For many of our clients, this is the most invigorating part of the process. It’s where you get to dream big, identifying where you want to end up. To ensure your goals are achievable, we recommend using the SMART guidelines, specific, measurable, achievable, relevant, and time-bound.
Let’s work through a healthcare strategy example of a good SMART goal:
“Increase telemedicine appointments by 50% (from 1000 to 1500 per month) within the next 12 months.”
Here’s what makes it SMART:
Specific: Clearly states what is to be achieved (increase in telemedicine appointments)
Measurable: Quantifies the increase (50%, from 1000 to 1500 per month)
Achievable: 50% increase seems challenging but realistic
Relevant: Aligns with the opportunity to expand telemedicine services identified in the SWOT analysis
Time-bound: Sets a clear timeframe (within the next 12 months)
By contrast, a not-SMART goal might look like one of these:
"Improve our telemedicine services" - Vague, not measurable, no time frame
"Double our telemedicine appointments by next week" - While specific and measurable, it's not achievable in the given time frame
"Implement the most advanced telehealth system in the world" - Not specific or measurable
Consult and Align With Key Stakeholders
With goals set, it's crucial to gain understanding and support across your organization. Rather than using a top-down approach, engage your stakeholders by inviting their feedback.
Share your reasoning behind the goals, referencing your SWOT analysis and SMART goal framework. Be open to input and willing to implement changes based on stakeholder feedback.
This collaborative process increases the likelihood of stakeholders actively supporting and implementing a healthcare business strategy.
Analyze the Market Trends
Before finalizing your strategy in healthcare, research current market trends to improve your chances of success. This can be a key piece to your healthcare strategy planning. We recommend using a competitor analysis, focusing on primary competitors, organizations serving the same market and offering similar services in your region.
Systematically record your competitors' tactics across sectors like operations and marketing. For each competitor, gather key information including their strengths, weaknesses, and market share. Then by taking your findings and creating a checklist you can systematize this information gathering process.
Finally, analyze the collected data to identify emerging trends you could leverage in your healthcare strategy and integration. For instance, if most competitors have a weak presence in rural areas, this could present an expansion opportunity to meet your growth targets.
Develop a Strategy Execution Plan
Your strategy execution plan is your roadmap for action. Consider the following:
What specific tactics will you employ to support your overall strategy?
Who needs to be empowered for each tactic to make sure it gets done?
Is there any additional training that needs to be provided?
What resources need to be allocated, where?
We often share this reminder with clients: effective execution is more about who than what. Empower your team to handle the specifics as they arise, rather than providing an exhaustive checklist of micro-steps!
Communicate & Implement the Strategy
With informed buy-in from everyone involved, implementing the strategy should happen without much oversight from decision-makers. However, don’t forget about a healthcare communications strategy, during and after implementation! You should make sure communication channels are clear, so any problems that arise can be addressed right away.
Monitor and Evaluate As Needed
Evaluation is built into the process, rather than added later. This makes for a lean strategy in healthcare that’s always improving.
Start by identifying Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) that reflect your strategy's performance. What metrics will give you insight into how well your strategy is performing? Common healthcare KPIs include:
Patient satisfaction scores
Patient retention
Patient outcomes
Number of telemedicine appointments
Financial performance indicators
Once you have your KPIs, establish a timeline for recording and reviewing them. We recommend the following schedule:
Monthly: Collect data for each KPI
Quarterly: Review data with key decision makers and team members, discussing progress and potential improvements
Annually: Conduct a formal review of KPI trends and overall progress to adjust your healthcare strategy plan
FAQs
What Are the Common Challenges in Developing a Healthcare Strategy?
The most common challenges we see are: aligning stakeholder interests, communicating the plan and why it matters across teams, adapting to changing regulations, keeping pace with technological advancements, and balancing long-term goals with short-term priorities.
In our experience, the most successful healthcare strategies are those that are created with an acknowledgment of potential challenges, so decision-makers are more prepared.
How Can We Measure the Success of Our Healthcare Strategy?
As we outlined above, we recommend evaluating your strategy throughout the year, recording and reviewing Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) such as patient satisfaction scores, patient outcomes, financial performance, and market share growth.
What Are the Key Trends To Watch in Healthcare Strategy for 2025?
As we head into 2025, there are several top healthcare strategy trends to watch for. First, there will be increased attention to patient experience across all elements of the patient journey, from the call center to care delivery. Additionally, we predict more focus on providing streamlined home health options for the aging and chronically ill population. Lastly, “buy-ups” will likely see greater adoption, which could lead to larger and less personal care organizations.
Other trends include doubling down on those that have been gaining speed for some time: sustainability efforts, healthcare equity and access, defining the role of AI in patient and clinician experience, and balancing organizational goals with clinician burnout and shortages.
The Bottom Line
Just as an Olympic rowing team moves in unison toward the finish line, aligning your organization around a comprehensive healthcare strategy propels you toward your goals, year after year. This alignment not only secures business success and strengthens patient experience, but also improves employee retention, helping your team feel part of a greater mission.
At EnticEdge, we know everything is made easier with a strong healthcare strategy — and we’ve helped dozens of organizations through our personalized healthcare strategy consulting, from regional hospital systems to clinics, create and implement their strategies successfully. If you're ready to move your business forward, reach out to us for a free strategy session. We’ll walk you through the process and help you establish a roadmap for success.
