Management strategies in hospitals: scenario planning.
BACKGROUND
Instead of waiting for challenges to confront hospital management, doctors and managers should act in advance to optimize and sustain value-based health. This work highlights the importance of scenario planning in hospitals, proposes an elaborated definition of the stakeholders of a hospital and defines the influence factors to which hospitals are exposed to.


METHODS
Based on literature analysis as well as on personal interviews with stakeholders we propose an elaborated definition of stakeholders and designed a questionnaire that integrated the following influence factors, which have relevant impact on hospital management: political/legal, economic, social, technological and environmental forces. These influence factors are examined to develop the so-called critical uncertainties. Thorough identification of uncertainties was based on a "Stakeholder Feedback".


RESULTS
Two key uncertainties were identified and considered in this study: the development of workload for the medical staff the profit oriented performance of the medical staff. According to the developed scenarios, complementary education of the medical staff as well as of non-medical top executives and managers of hospitals was the recommended core strategy. Complementary scenario-specific strategic options should be considered whenever needed to optimize dealing with a specific future development of the health care environment.


CONCLUSIONS
Strategic planning in hospitals is essential to ensure sustainable success. It considers multiple situations and integrates internal and external insights and perspectives in addition to identifying weak signals and "blind spots". This flows into a sound planning for multiple strategic options. It is a state of the art tool that allows dealing with the increasing challenges facing hospital management.
Department of Orthopedic, Trauma and Plastic Surgery, University Hospital Leipzig, Leipzig, Germany ; Leipzig Graduate School of Management, Handelshochschule Leipzig HHL, Leipzig, Germany.
Mohamed
M
Ghanem
Department of Anesthesiology and Intensive Care Medicine, University Hospital Leipzig, Leipzig, Germany.
Jörg
J
Schnoor
Department of Orthopedic, Trauma and Plastic Surgery, University Hospital Leipzig, Leipzig, Germany.
Christoph-Eckhard
CE
Heyde
Human Resources and Legal Department, University Hospital Leipzig, Leipzig, Germany.
Sandra
S
Kuwatsch
Department of Finance, Planning and Controlling, University Hospital Leipzig, Leipzig, Germany.
Marco
M
Bohn
Department of Orthopedic, Trauma and Plastic Surgery, University Hospital Leipzig, Leipzig, Germany.
Christoph
C
Josten