Scorecard Quarterly Commentary

Strategic Planning – A path to greater health impact

Overview

This brief discussion reviews findings regarding the role of strategic planning as a critical success factor in engaging employees, improving health, and achieving health care cost savings. The HERO Scorecard assesses six broad dimensions of employee health management (EHM) best practices: strategic planning, leadership engagement, program level management, programs, engagement methods and measurement and evaluation.  Each of these sections is scored individually. The highest possible score for all sections combined is 200; the average score for the 747 unique organizations currently in the Scorecard database is 94. A recent analysis of the HERO Scorecard database looked at both respondents’ section scores and individual best practices within each section to gauge their impact on engagement, health improvement, and healthcare savings.  These three measures (engagement, health improvement and healthcare savings) were then analyzed by best practice dimensions.

Strategic Planning Activity

The strategic planning section has 10 items that cover issues such as having a written plan, measures of success, approach for addressing different portions of the population, and whether the planning process is effective or not.  In one of the items 58% of the respondents (n=744) responded that they did not have a formal written strategic plan regarding EHM, about 25% have a multi-year plan and 18% take planning one year at a time.  These findings seem surprising given most business decisions involving significant human capital and financial investment occur within a strategic business planning context.  Why is it that investment in EHM would be any different?  This finding sets the context for another item that indicated that almost half (46%) of the respondents noted they do not think their strategic planning for EHM has been effective.  That may be easily understand in that most organizations indicated they don’t have a plan or they only plan a one year at a time. 

Impact of Strategic Planning on Engagement, Health and Cost Savings

While strategic planning may seem like an obvious element in successful program implementation and outcomes this analysis confirmed a direct relationship between the two. In fact, of the six best practice categories, strategic planning was among the top three factors driving improved health, engagement and healthcare savings.  Strategic planning had the greatest impact on health improvement of all the categories. Eighty-six percent of those who rated their organization as having very effective or effective Strategic Planning reported seeing health improvement, versus only 59% of those who rated their Strategic Planning as not very effective or did not have Strategic Planning at all.  

Additionally, strategic planning had the second strongest impact on engagement following only incentives as having the highest impact on engagement.  Finally, impact on savings is also closely linked to strategic planning with only communications and incentives having stronger relationships.  Overall, strategic planning which in many cases drives the overall strategy for communications, engagement (leadership and program), and programming as well as measures for success is clearly a critical best practice that can often be overlooked in an effort to “get started” and just implement a program.  This analysis supports the importance of the strategic planning process to increase the likelihood of achieving positive program outcomes

 

About the Author

Seth Serxner, PhD, MPH
Chief Health Officer and Senior Vice President of Population Health
OptumHealth Care Solutions. Seth’s deep knowledge of behavior change, population health and measurement allow him to visualize and deliver on program innovation. He has more than 25 years of experience in health and productivity management and has published more than 30 articles.

Seth came to OptumHealth from Mercer’s Total Health Management specialty, where he served as partner and senior consultant for nine years. During his tenure there he established himself as a national expert on behavior change, program design and measurement.