Elevate Outcomes with Strong Strategic Planning Services

An effective strategic plan is visionary, innovative, and actionable. It accounts for changing economic, demographic, payment, care delivery, employment, and market trends. And it helps you chart a clear path to success, even in the face of constant changes to your operations. HDG’s experienced team can help you develop a plan that meets these objectives while honoring your unique positioning. Our comprehensive strategic planning services guide clients through an evaluation of options to deliver specific deployable strategies, tactics and timelines, implementation support, and financial modeling to help you achieve success.

Introducing a new service line? Opening a new community? Restructuring existing operations? Change can be challenging, which is why HDG’s proven business planning processes are designed to help organizations gain the information they need to move in the right direction. We support business and service changes with planning that spans market research and workforce strategy to navigating provisions for resident care and more. With this support, organizations can trust their big change will result in effective operations, satisfied consumers, and positive financial results. 

It can be a struggle to understand the true growth potential in your existing or planned operating markets. It requires awareness of how your projected demand or utilization compares against other senior living providers locally and nationally. Yet knowing your market is a crucial first step in identifying the ideal location and service mix — and reasonable start-up or operating budget — for your senior living community. HDG helps organizations gain this insight.

Our market research team quantitatively identifies the demand for each product type in a defined market area in terms of units, using data such as demographics, income level, and workforce availability. Our experienced team can mystery shop market competitors for a more fully informed analysis. The result is a comprehensive report that delivers the quantitative and qualitative data needed to support sound business decisions.

Partnerships are essential to success in today’s healthcare sector. Strong partnerships can lead to high-quality integrated care that allow organizations across the entire care continuum to better meet patient and resident needs. HDG’s experienced consultants provide essential guidance in creating partnerships that improve strategic, operational, and financial outcomes for both partners. By highlighting each partner’s unique value in the continuum, HDG’s experts can help clients realize more effective care transitions and ensure patients are discharged to the most appropriate and cost-effective post-acute setting.

Hospitals and health systems often find that post-acute care carries a host of complexity. There’s the need to gauge short- and long-term demand, availability and quality of post-acute care, operational control, and cost of care, among other nuanced issues. HDG’s expertise in this area helps hospitals and health systems develop a strong post-acute care strategy. Our comprehensive strategic planning services include an assessment of your services and resources, post-acute care gap analysis, strategic recommendations, and financial impact analysis. We can also evaluate health systems’ owned senior care portfolios to determine strategic options for partnerships, network development, joint ventures, management, or divestiture.

Forward-thinking value-based health care entities, including accountable care organizations (ACOs) and managed care organizations (MCOs), are embracing post-acute care as an essential component of the care continuum. It is demonstrating clear value in improving patient outcomes and reducing the total cost of care. Post-acute networks are also proving critical to the financial and operational success of value-based health care organizations. With the rapid expansion of value-based and risk-based payments, a network of high-quality post-acute services with a strong cost profile can be a cornerstone for success.

HDG can help you understand the specific demand for post-acute care in the market your organization serves and assess the strategic implications. Our team can move you from strategy to development of a network of preferred post-acute providers with appropriate infrastructure for collaboration between providers. We can also help post-acute providers develop the data, relationships, and approach necessary for successful positioning within established networks.

The way providers are paid by the government and other payors is rapidly changing — and it’s changing the way care is delivered. HDG’s team of experts can help you navigate the complexities of value-based payment and care transformation. From understanding and planning for change to redesigning the way you deliver care, we can help your organization in achieving the Triple Aim: simultaneously providing a great patient experience and quality outcomes at a reduced cost while improving the health of patient populations.

HDG also assists payors and providers in designing cutting-edge alternative payment models. This process involves an assessment of your organization’s needs to guide the creation of aligned payment and operational incentives that promote and achieve beneficial outcomes. This work encompasses the operational, financial, and contracting considerations needed to ensure your model’s success.

Declining workforce availability, increasing regulatory pressure, and shifting consumer expectations are creating unprecedented operational and financial challenges. When faced alongside pressure from lenders and a fluctuating landscape of competitors, proactive organizations recognize they must adapt to survive. A strategic redesign can provide a strong basis for your evolution.

HDG recommends that redesign efforts begin with enhanced research and data collection, including an up-to-date market demand study. This can help determine current demand and service offerings, and predict how demographics and senior services demand will change over the next five years. HDG can also develop pro-forma models to project the financial impact of repositioning recommendations, informing budgeting and capital needs. Through this approach, your organization gains a strategic framework that addresses current realities and provides a vision and direction toward a more sustainable future.

Your board of directors play an instrumental role in leading and supporting your organization through a rapidly changing care environment. However, nonprofit governing entities can be hampered by an insufficient understanding of the nuances of senior living and care or a lack of clarity around their roles or functions. HDG can empower boards and executive leadership by defining board accountability, providing industry education, and establishing structure and decision-making processes that ensure the necessary skills are in place to guide success.