Summary

In this study session you have learned that:

1. Planning is forecasting and thinking about things that may happen in the future.
2. In healthcare management you need to plan in order to have a clear understanding of what needs to be done and why you need to do it. Furthermore, it helps you to prioritise health problems so that limited resources are used for actions that will bring most benefit.
3. In healthcare management there are two types of planning process: strategic planning and operational planning. Strategic planning is set at a higher level, while operational planning is done by people doing the frontline work, such as health professionals.
4. There are eight stages of healthcare planning: situational analysis, problem identification and prioritisation, objective setting, strategic formulation, sequencing of activities, resource allocation, action planning, and monitoring and control.
5. Objectives are essential for making plans and for measuring results. An objective has to be SMART which means Specific, Measurable, Attainable, Realistic and Time-framed.