Strategy & Strategic Planning

Strategic planning is an essential business process for health and human service provider organizations. A strategic plan provides clarity and transparency from the board on performance expectations and priorities and serves as the overall foundation for organizational infrastructure development and operating plans. However, strategy is only one factor of the overall strategic planning process. Rather, strategy and strategic planning require a scenario-based, tactical, and detailed implementation and execution plan with the right management team and performance metrics to ensure the organization is progressing toward its strategic initiatives. Amid changing reimbursement models, consumerism, and other market disruptors, a strategic plan that is both market-focused and nimble is key for sustainability in an uncertain future.

Latest Resources

• The New Cyber Risk Equation – What Health & Human Services Executives Need To Prepare For: A Discussion With Doug Howard, Chief Executive Officer Of Pondurance
• Building Business Acumen In A Changing Human Services Market: Turnover, Data & AI With Scott Bachik, Chief Executive Officer Of The BI Collaborative
• The Margin Mindset: Best Of The 2026 OPEN MINDS Executive Leadership Retreat
• Beyond The Scribe: What Behavioral Health Executives Should Expect From AI Next With Surabhi Bhandari, Co-Founder & Chief Executive Officer Of Soulside AI
• Oregon Opens 12-Bed Youth Secure Inpatient Facility, Increasing State Capacity To 44 Beds
• Positioned To Pivot?
• Built To Scale, Not To Break: A Growing Population Health Organization’s Guide To People + Finance Infrastructure
• Strategic Planning For Times Of Uncertainty: The 2026 OPEN MINDS Seminar On Nimble Data-Driven Planning
• The Future of Long-Term Services & Supports: Centene’s Vision For Innovation, Access & Value
• Whole Person Care In Action: Mercy Care’s Blueprint For The Future of Integrated Care
• Nimble Strategy – Leadership Agility In A Changing Market
• Configuring Your EHR To Optimize Quality Data: Building the Foundation for Better Insights
• Building Cultures Of High Reliability: Lessons From The High Reliability Organization Paradigm
• High Reliability
• The $18.6 Billion Bump: Best Of The 2026 OPEN MINDS Service Excellence Institute

Diversify Or Die

The current strategy challenge for health and human service executive teams is to figure out how to grow, and whether those investments in growth should be gradual expansions of current services or a giant step outside of current geographies or payers. That issue is fundamental to strategic plans for the next few years (see Scenario-Based Strategic Planning: The OPEN MINDS Management Newsletter, December 2025). Most executives realize that “diversify or die” is a management adage… Read

• Quality As Strategy
• State & Local Strategies For The Next Decade: Building Age-Ready Systems of Care
• Integrated Supports For Dual-Diagnosis: The Convergence of Mental Health & I/DD Services
• Integrated Behavioral Health In Action: Lessons From Kaiser Permanente’s Whole Person Care Model
• Beyond The Launch: Embedding Behavioral Health In Emergency Departments

To sign-up for monthly Strategy & Strategic Planning alerts, you must be signed in to your account.