Running Head: Strategic Planning Process Map 1

Strategic Planning Process Map - (Surgery Partners-Logan Laboratory)

Ermias Habte

University of San Diego

ENLC 557
Running Head: Strategic Planning Process Map 2

Step One: Set the Stage

I selected an organization I currently work at called Logan laboratories. Logan laboratories is a

toxicology laboratory that provides drug screening and confirmation testing to determine the presence

or absence of parent drugs and major metabolites. These tests help physicians monitor therapeutic

drugs and illicit drugs in their patients. Logan especially concentrates on pain management drugs.

Logan Laboratories belongs to the parent company Surgery Partners. Surgery Partners has over

180 locations nationwide that include surgery centers and other ancillary locations. Logan labs is a fairly

new company that was created in 2011. But in a short seven years, Logan Labs has become one of the

premier toxicology laboratories in Florida.

Surgery Partners mission and vision

Mission: Our mission is to improve the quality of life of our patients, physicians and employees

through efficient and compassionate healthcare.

Vision: Our vision is to create a network of state of the art ambulatory surgical centers that

provide outpatient surgical procedures in a variety of practice specialties, leading to superior

patient care and sustained financial wellbeing for our surgeon partners. We will continue to

develop supporting healthcare services to enhance our partners’ practices. Through our network

of physician partners, physician practices, ambulatory surgery centers and supporting ancillary

businesses we will provide an efficient and cost-effective healthcare delivery system for

surgeons and patients. Providing the highest quality of care to our patients is the foundation of

our business. Our physician customers will rely on our expertise to provide them with the best

possible environment to perfect, not practice, medicine. Finally, Surgery Partners recognizes

that ethical behavior and impeccable integrity are not only the foundation of being a good
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corporate citizen, but is simply sound business and we commit to fostering these values in

ourselves, our employees, and our business partners.

Strategic Planning team

1. Lab Director will be the person that will be the link between the executive team and the

strategic plan team.

2. Lead Medical Technologist will be the leader of the team that is putting the plan into action.

This team leader has the most experience so they will be a great asset in this process.

3. Under the lead tech, will be 2 Medical Technologists that will be the ones doing a lot of the

implementation.

a. Med Tech 1 has 10 years of healthcare experience including 3 years in a leadership

position.

b. Med Tech 2 has 5 years of healthcare experience including writing and implementing

standard operational procedures.

The timeline for this strategic planning process is one month. During this month, the lab

director has assured the team that all needed resources will be at the team’s disposal. With the lab

director having direct work report with the vice president of the company, which reports to

stakeholders and board of directors, resources will be readily available. With a very strong team

constructed for this strategic plan, success is inevitable.

Step Two: Do Your Homework

The corporate set-up of Logan Laboratories is quite interesting. The parent company is Surgery

Partners and under that umbrella is Logan Laboratories and many other organizations that perform

surgery, lab tests and other patient services. These individual organizations work cohesively to support

one another while providing different services. Essentially, they are a different branch, but work
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together under the parent company of Surgery Partners. The physicians send all their patients to the

labs for testing and the labs send their clients to the physicians for checkups and surgeries. This keeps

all the business under the parent company and benefits all branches involved.

Surgery Partners SWOT Analysis

Strengths Opportunities

-Network of organizations working together -Possibly expanding and

-Technology advantage accepting new patients

-Improved productivity -Working towards being fully

Positive -Outstanding staff and culture staffed

-Excellent facility that is only 5 years old -Improving the training

-High level of organizational efficiency process

-Competitive pay

-A great Monday – Friday daytime working

schedule

Weaknesses Threats

-Long and unorganized training time for new -New competition

Negative employees -Governing bodies’ audits,

-Staffing shortage policies and law changes

-Business slowdown

Through all the possible setbacks and obstacles, Logan Laboratories is in great shape to

succeed going forward. Logan Laboratories has one thing a lot of other health care organizations

do not have. They have a very happy staff that is content with their pay and love their Monday –
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Friday schedule that is hard to find in the health field. Moving forward, the main thing that

needs improvement is just working towards being fully staffed. There is a shortage of licensed

Medical Technologists everywhere. Especially for a small toxicology lab that doesn’t have the

foot print and brand recognition that big hospitals and other large organizations enjoy. One way

to combat that is by reaching out to local Medical Lab Science schools and getting the name out

there through presentations and other tools to attract future Medical Technologists.

Step Three: Describe Your Culture

Logan Laboratories is a subsidiary of Surgery Partners. Under the umbrella of Surgery Partners

there are over 180 locations nationwide that consist of multiple types of healthcare providers that

include outpatient surgery centers and laboratories. These practices are generally small in size and look

to serve the community they belong to in a more personal way. Whether it is physicians or patients, the

objective is to serve all customers on a personal level. (About us, 2018)

The mission of Surgery Partners to improve the quality of life for patients, physicians and

employees is supported by the structure of the organization. The smaller locations are able to take care

of their patients, physician partners and employees simply because of their smaller size. Generally with

large hospitals, it is hard to recognize individuals that are standing out. There’s generally upper

management that is making the decisions on everything that we do, even though they have very little

idea of what we do. They just look at numbers and decide of our fate. In a smaller location where the

people making decisions are down the hall, they are able to make decisions that are in the best interest

of everyone involved.

This keeps the employees and the work environment as a whole very positive which then

translates to a staff that is very productive and living a balanced life. When employees are happy, they
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take ownership of the company and do a better job overall. This practice then comes full circle. Happy

employees mean productivity and great service which means happy customers.

This institutional business plan, takes care of the purpose and values of the organization which is

improving the quality of life of patients, physicians and employees.

Step Four: Frame the Questions

There are three strategic concerns with Surgery Partners. The number one issue being staff

shortage just as it is with many other laboratories. There are many things that can be speculated as

being reasons for this. One is the fact that there just isn’t much marketing being done to promote the

profession. And a profession like this where there is a licensing requirement means that organizations

can’t just hire anyone off the street. There are many college graduates with science degrees that are

more than capable of doing the job, but since they do not have the requirements for the license, they

are not eligible. To add to this, most of the work force will be retiring within the next 15-20 years so it

might get worse.

Long term solution for this staffing shortage is to market the profession. It is imperative that

Medical Technologists and the schools take on this task and do whatever it takes to get the word out.

This can be done by participating in things like college and job fairs at high schools, online advertising

etc… A more short-term solution to take is for the governing bodies to get together and come up with a

testing process to allow people with other science degrees to take a certification exam.

Another area of concern is the training process. When a new employee comes on, they are

subjected to long and unorganized training process. There is a different person doing the training from

one day to the next, which is never a good idea. And there is always a rush to complete the training and

put the new employee alone on the floor to work because of the shortage. Here, the organization just

needs to communicate with new employees to make sure they are completely competent before they
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end up having to work alone.

Lastly, there is the issue of preanalytical errors that include wrong orders and labels. To control

this issue Logan Labs can send a person to go train the partners that are collecting the specimens so that

they are taking the necessary steps to minimize the incidence of error events. And of course, taking care

of the staffing issues will help this as well.

To conclude, these 3 areas are what I would consider areas of concerns. But they are issues that

can be contained eventually. And when that time comes, Logan Labs will create an even bigger gap

between their organization and the competition.

Step Five and Six: Answer the Questions and Get Specific

Strategic area #1: Staff shortage

Strategy: To implement different ways of recruiting to minimize staff shortage issues

Action step #1: Market the profession. The responsibility to market the profession
belongs to all the Medical Technologists in the company. All techs will participate in job
fairs and other promotional events. This can be started as soon as possible.

Action Step #2: Widening testing eligibility criteria to become a Medical Technologist.
This is a decision that can only be made by politicians and state health board. Citing the
major shortage, this change can be very beneficial.

Action Step #3: Offering incentives for candidates. By offering a signing bonus to
prospective applicants, the organization can attract more techs. This can be done as
soon as funds are approved by the executed team

Strategic area #2: Training process

Strategy: Improve training process to make it more productive and help everyone involved.

Action Step #1: Have only one person complete all the training. Assign Sarah and
Lisandra as designated trainers so that the training is consistent. Timetable for this is as
soon as the organization is fully staffed.
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Action Step #2: Communicate with all trainees to make sure they are not having to fend
for themselves before they are completely ready and competent. This can be
implemented right away.

Action Step #3: Have the lab director set up learning modules with MediLab for all
employees. This can be done as soon as possible.

Strategic area #3: Preanalytical errors

Strategy: Minimize error incidents in the preanalytical stage

Action Step #1: The Lab supervisor Nicole can train clients to improve processing. This
can be done when the organization is fully staffed.

Action Step #2: Nicole the supervisor will come up with a process that can be used to
double check the preanalytical phase.

Action Step #3: The lab director can order narrow ‘bullet’ tubes that allow low samples
to be tested. This can be done as soon as possible.

Step Seven: Discover the Vision

Since first opening its doors in 2004, Surgery Partners has been more than just a business in its

community. Throughout the years Surgery Partners has reached out to its partners, which includes the

patient and families, maintaining accessibility to resources and expertise rarely found in this industry.

Surgery Partners puts a huge emphasis on making healthcare more local and personal.

Today Surgery Partners is an industry leader in the surgical services, with a differentiated

healthcare delivery model backed by the suite of ancillary services comprised of diagnostic laboratory,

specialized physician practices, urgent care facilities, anesthesia services, optical services and specialty

pharmacy services.

Going forward the vision of Surgery Partners as a company is to maintain the diverse aspect of

the company as far as services provided while being dedicated to improving the quality of care in a
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convenient and cost-effective manner. Surgery partners accomplishes this by modeling each locations’

strategic plan to fit its specific community. Surgery Partners emphasizes the uniqueness of each

community they serve and the fact that they work with their partners which includes patients and

families to develop a customized strategy for each facility.

The diversity of services provided by Surgery Partners is evident in the different locations the

company operates. These services are comprised of outpatient surgery centers, optical services,

pharmacy, diagnostic laboratories, urgent care facilities, and anesthesia services. All these services are

strategically set up based on what their specific community needs. This will keep being the vision of

Surgery Partners now and in the future.

Step Eight: Hold Yourself Accountable

The objective of Surgery Partners is to maintain the strong footprint the organization enjoys.

This will be accomplished by putting things in place to deal with the staffing issues. To combat this issue

there will be a plan in place that will be ongoing. Within the first three months, the organization will

schedule fairs and lunch and learns at local schools to promote the profession and just simply make

prospecting students aware of the promotion. This is the responsibility of the Medical Technologists

who know the profession first hand. Second step which will fall within three to six months is to put in

place an incentive program to applicants which will help entice them to join the organization. This will

require approval from the executive team hence the six-month time frame. The last step which will take

the longest and probably will be the hardest is to convince state politicians to loosen the testing criteria

to become a Medical Technologist. Currently, a medical lab science curriculum is required to sit for the

medical technologist exam. A suggestion will be made to allow college graduates with science degrees

to sit for the exam and become certified upon getting the required grade.
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Second on the list is improving the training process. This can be implemented right away

because it doesn’t require and funding, outside influence or anything challenging. The Lab director

along with the Lead Medical Technologist will come up with a better plan that will improve the training

process. This plan for this objective is to have a designated trainer so that all trainees are getting the

same information. Secondly, making sure that the trainees are not rushed into the rotation and feel

completely comfortable before being signed off.

Lastly, addressing error issues dealing with the preanalytical stage of processing is the objective.

This can be implemented at the beginning of the process. The only thing required here is for the lab

director and lead technologist to put a plan in place to train clients on how to process specimen. In

addition, the lab assistants will be retrained to make sure there isn’t any holes in the plan. Upon

implementation of these objectives stated above, Surgery Partners stands to profit a great deal and

maintain success.
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References

About Us. (n.d.). Retrieved from http://www.loganlabs.net/about-us

Ebener, D. R. & Smith, F. L. (2015). Strategic Planning - An Interactive Process for Leaders. Mahwah, NJ:

Paulist Press International.

Ginter, P. M., Duncan, W. J., & Swayne, L. E. (2013). Strategic management of health care organizations

(7th ed.). San Francisco, CA: Jossey-Bass.

Wayne S. DeVeydt. (n.d.). Retrieved from http://surgerypartners.com/about-us