A strategic planning model for multihospital systems.

Strategic planning and marketing for regional multihospital systems requires aids far greater in scope than those needed by single institutions. In the first place, planners for a regional system must be able to determine effects of its actions throughout the region, taking into account competitive interactions among a large number of institutions. This requires a much greater degree of sophistication than is usually found at the level of the single institution. Moreover, this greater sophistication cannot be bought at the expense of speed or demands on the time of the decisionmakers, nor can it be achieved through more sophisticated managerial skills. The aids must also be able to handle expeditiously a far larger volume of inquiry. Those two considerations shaped the design of the Multihospital Strategic Planning Model. Because of its comprehensiveness, the ease with which management can use it, and the speed with which it can answer a large volume of questions, it has become a permanent part of the ongoing corporate-level planning and marketing activities of the Maryland Health Care System in Baltimore. The planning staff can quickly analyze a wide variety of "What if?" questions by making selected changes--on an objective or a subjective basis--in the data files that represent the input variables of the system. By storing such changes in new data files, the staff can piggyback future "What if?" questions onto those asked in the past. The system includes on-line software to change data and create new files. Designed in an interactive mode, the system may be used by the planning staff, in the planning office, at any time.