Developing “Goals of Care” for Your Organization: Strategic Planning for the Palliative Care Professional (TH335)

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•Describe different ways to develop a business, operations, and personnel strategy for medium and long term planning.•Understand avenues to evaluate internal and immediately-available resources, assets, and strengths and then critically appraise external threats and align future actions in response to organizational priorities.•Collate input from experts and audience members regarding real-life practical tips for timing and execution of strategic planning. In an evolving healthcare environment, including rapid changes to evaluation and reimbursement of care, palliative care clinicians need a robust strategy to sustain their competitive advantage. As clinical programs grow into outpatient practices and venture into community-based settings, they often set out to complete a lengthy and intensive retreat to define a mission and vision. Sometimes they also perform a SWOT analysis, but upon completion, oftentimes clinicians and administrators go back to an uncoordinated, misaligned clinical delivery apparatus. Frankly, these efforts are not fruitful, either because they lack the rigor in approach or use methods not tailored to the needs of palliative care organizations. Using an interdisciplinary panel of clinicians with backgrounds in palliative care program development, palliative care longitudinal growth, and corporate world business strategy, we will discuss several topics critical to strategic planning. We will cover topics being taught in business schools today, applying these concepts to our palliative care clinical world. Topics covered will include eliminating fluff, aligning with the overall organization's strategy for healthcare, developing strategy using the 5-diamond approach, and differentiating strategic positioning versus operational efficiency. Further, we will provide attendees real-world palliative care business cases, highlighting important tasks “to implement on Monday” such as: understanding external threats, appreciating internal resources, and using the 9-box matrix for prioritizing efforts. Our goal is to demystify strategic planning, making it an everyday skill for palliative care professionals to participate in, and use regularly in their operational toolbox.