For many healthcare organizations, the gap between strategy and execution continues to widen at a time when they can least afford it.  These essentials offer a solid foundation they should use to develop their people so they can bridge this gap and meet their business goals. Advancing the organization and achieving business success require developing new products, finding new markets and building enabling systems and infrastructure. For healthcare organizations, this may mean offering e-visits, teaming with insurers to benefit from new payment models, or developing informatics capabilities. Regardless, keeping execution aligned with the strategy is one of the most difficult challenges in running a healthcare business. In the current environment the task seems more daunting than ever due to the following:

• Higher medical costs and harsh economic realities, including high unemployment, have resulted in a fall in service volume for many healthcare organizations as people delay or neglect getting medical care. The resulting environment of scarcity has often meant that those individuals once responsible for championing programs to implement and sustain process improvement, change management, and project management competencies are no longer with the firm or are dispersed across a newly reorganized and often fragmented organization.
• Along with organizational improvement efforts, many of the support structures meant to reinforce a culture of execution have also been disbanded or diminished. This has left the development, training and reinforcement of project management best practices, methodologies and systems floundering.
• With few exceptions, most industries are experiencing the aging of their workforce and the inevitable loss of critical human capital. Healthcare organizations have the burden of reining in employee wages and benefits to maintain operating margins as an additional obstacle to attracting and retaining talent.
• Tough regulatory requirements associated with legislation continue to impact the healthcare industry, including HIPAA and the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act. The compliance mandates these laws impose require diverting resources to meet hard deadlines to avoid punitive consequences for non-compliance.

As with most challenges, they are not insurmountable and meeting them comes down to ensuring the basics are in place. Delivering desired outcomes depends on project-focused competencies and a culture of execution. The key professionals in your organization who are responsible for advancing your strategy through new products, new markets, and new systems must have a solid foundation of competencies and be supported by a culture and structure that drives execution. demand suppl