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Although strategic planning promised to boost organizational performance, many health care managers found it difficult to implement it successfully. The purpose of this paper is to investigate the success of strategic planning in health care organizations of Iran.

This descriptive and cross-sectional study was conducted in 2016 using a valid and reliable questionnaire completed by 99 health care managers in Tehran province, Iran.

Strategic planning was positively related to organizational performance including employees’ and patients’ satisfaction and organizational productivity. However, strategic planning was moderately successful in enhancing organizational performance of Iranian health care organizations (score of 2.84 out of 5). The most and least success was observed in the planning and employee management constructs of organizational performance. Process management, organizational culture and customer management constructs had the most effect on the success of strategic plans in health care organizations.

Strategic planning is effective and provides a clear focused direction for health care organizations. Understanding the success factors of strategic planning would enable managers to develop more effective methods for developing, implementing and evaluating strategic plans in health care organizations.

This paper highlights the relationship between strategic planning and organizational performance and offers suggestions on how to develop and implement strategic plans to achieve higher organizational performance.

The purpose of this paper is to provide, first, an explication of the interconnectivity of logistics as an element of health care disaster posturing and second, to use a context of strategic‐level planning, for supply chain management's inclusion in health care emergency management planning.

Using a review of existent literature, this work examines and expounds upon the impact of effective supply chain management processes in disaster mitigation and planning.

This paper presents a discourse in health care supply chain management's involvement in disaster mitigation by clarifying the role of logistics in strategic‐level planning.

Optimally, for a health care organization to be truly prepared for disaster, leaders must first have a sound logistics platform from whence support and sustainment are received. For an organization to be truly prepared logistically, however, there must exist a basic understanding of principles related to emergency management and health care operations.

Arguably, a critical path to success in health care supply chain readiness posturing involves evidence‐based, critically applied insight into disaster mitigation and preparations across multiple echelons of managerial responsibilities.

A key recurring problem is that little research is available or related specifically to health care logistics management. Few works can be found concerning health care supply chain management's involvement in disaster posturing. In an applied sense, the paper provides health care managers with concepts related to effective crisis mitigation.

Increasingly mental health services are attempting to become recovery focused which demands changing the nature of day-to-day interactions and the quality of the experience in services. Care planning is the daily work of mental health services and within this context, care planning that enhances both the experience and the outcomes of a person's recovery is a key element for effective services. However, care plans, the care planning process and the Care Programme Approach (CPA) continue to pose a challenge for services. The purpose of this paper is to discuss these issues.

Conceptual paper.

Within recovery focused services a care plan becomes the driving force, or action plan, behind a person's recovery journey and is focused on their individual needs, strengths, aspirations and personal goals. If involving people directly in the development of their care plan is critical to creating better outcomes then supporting self-management, shared decision making and coproduction all underpin the care planning process. Based on the evidence of people's experience of care plans and the care planning process it is time to seriously debate our current conceptualisation and approach to care planning and the future of the CPA.

The paper describes aspects of the current situation with regard to the effectiveness of care planning in supporting a person's recovery. The paper raises some important questions.

Employee turnover is a growing challenge for health-care providers delivering patient care today. US population demographics are shifting as the population ages, which leaves the field of health care poised to lose key leaders and employees to retirement at a time when patient care has grown more complex. This means health care will lose its core of key employees at a time when skilled leadership and specialized knowledge is most needed and directly impacts health care's ability to deliver quality care. Operational succession planning (OSP) may be one solution to manage this looming challenge in health care, as the process identifies and develops the next generation of leadership. Thus, this exploratory national study used a quantitative and cross-sectional design to examine the relationship between OSP and employee turnover. Demographic and 10-point Likert scale data were collected from n = 66 medical practices, using an online survey instrument. Data were analyzed using various descriptive and inferential statistical methods. Distribution (frequency and chi-square) analyses of the study sample, one-way analysis of variance (ANOVA), and regression analyses were performed across seven demographic characteristics of the medical practices: Specialty, Ownership Structure, Number of full-time equivalent (FTE) Physicians, Number of FTE Clinical Employees, Number of FTE Nonclinical Employees, Number of FTE Employees Left Position, and Region. Study results provided statistically significant evidence to support the relationship between OSP and employee turnover, highlighting that OSP was associated with lower employee turnover. The finding suggests that OSP can serve as an effective mechanism for increasing employee retention.

The purpose of the paper is to investigate ambiguous language use in health-care project plans in a manner that accounts for the wider, institutional, public health-care context.

The article deployed a case study approach and drew from Fairclough's critical discourse analysis (CDA) as well as a keyword analysis to investigate two time-sequenced versions of the same project planning document for a health-care project in Finland.

In the project plans investigated, the study identified patient as a keyword possessing various meanings within the public health-care context. By examining the discursive practices around the keyword patient, the study demonstrated their role in constituting the institutional context as well as the function of this context in constraining these practices.

By looking at the potential of the CDA to investigate discursive practices of the keyword in two sequential versions of a project plan within the broader context of public health care, the study adds to the scant existing literature on critically oriented health-care project communication studies.

Health planners in Wales are developing the notion of “health gain” as the key to shaping health care provision in Wales over the coming decade. One of the twin components of “health gain”, the idea of “adding life to years”, is both crucial and controversial. The assumptions behind, and the planning implications arising from, the notion of “adding life to years” are examined and it is argued that health gain is essentially plural, diverse and contested. It is concluded that planning for health gain offers both moral dangers and moral gains.

Integrated care presents health workforce planners with significant uncertainty. This results from: (1) these workforces are likely in the future to be different from the present, (2) integrated care's variable definitions and (3) workforce policy and planning is not familiar with addressing such challenges. One means to deal with uncertainty is scenario analysis. In this study we reveal some integration-supportive workforce governance and planning policies that were derived from the application of scenario analysis.

Through a mixed methods design that applies content analysis, scenario construction and the policy Delphi method, we analysed a set of New Zealand's older persons health sector workforce scenarios. Developed from data gathered from workforce documents and studies, the scenarios were evaluated by a suitably qualified panel, and derived policy statements were assessed for desirability and feasibility.

One scenario was found to be most favourable, based on its broad focus, inclusion of prevention and references to patient dignity, although funding changes were indicated as necessary for its realisation. The integration-supportive policies are based on promoting network-based care models, patient-centric funding that promotes collaboration and the enhancement of interprofessional education and educator involvement.

Scenario analysis for policy production is rare in health workforce planning. We show how it is possible to identify policies to address an integrated care workforce's development using this method. The article provides value for planners and decision-makers by identifying the pros and cons of future situations and offers guidance on how to reduce uncertainty through policy rehearsal and reflection.

The UK Government has been planning changes to mental health legislation for at least eight years. On 23 March 2006, the Department of Health announced that many of these plans would proceed ‐ although through amendments to the 1983 Mental Health Act rather than a substantive Bill. These proposed reforms are significant but controversial. This paper sets out some of the reasons for welcoming the proposed changes. It is argued that the proposals to replace the responsible medical officer with a clinical supervisor are in keeping with best quality mental health care, and allow for proper multidisciplinary practice. Such an approach explicitly permits proper use of the skills and competencies of the workforce ‐ including psychologists. A second controversial aspect of the proposed reforms ‐ supervised community treatment orders, permitting compulsory care outside of hospitals ‐ represent not a violation of human rights, but a specific defence of ‘Article 8’ rights to protection of family and personal life. Finally, it is argued that the proposed amendments are important because mental health legislation dominates mental health care and the present 1983 Mental Health Act inappropriately consolidates the status of the medical model and the role of the responsible medical officer (and hence psychiatry). It is argued that the proposed changes are imperfect; in particular they lack inclusion of an ‘impaired judgement’ criterion, but it is suggested that necessary role and service redesign needs such amendments to allow the new ways of working programme to ‘bite’.

Health sector restructuring has been in vogue, but no country has engaged in as much health sector restructuring as New Zealand where, in a decade, there have been four different public health sector structures. This article discusses New Zealand’s four structures with an emphasis on relocating the critical functions of health care planning and purchasing, and on the development of the present district health board system. The four structures include: an area health board system (1989‐1991) with planning and purchasing located at “home” in local areas and closely aligned with service provision; a competitive internal market system (1993‐1996) which separated planning and purchasing from service provision; a centralised system with a “headquarters” controlling planning and purchasing (1997‐1999) while maintaining the distance from provision; and the district health board system currently under development (1999‐) which sees purchasing and planning sent home again to regions and linked closely with service provision. The present system entails the devolution of considerable responsibility to the local level, within a framework of strong central government control. Based on New Zealand’s experience, the article notes that all but the market structure appear to have provided an adequate environment for effective health care planning and purchasing.

The aim of this research is to develop a model to forecast short-term health cost changes. The motivation for producing such a model is to provide local decision makers with a tool to predict short-term health-care costs in their localities. In order to achieve this objective, we collected data on total health-care expenditures and demographic data for California counties from 2000 to 2007. We then used various statistical methods to better understand the data and developed a regression model. Each year's prediction model was then used to forecast the following year's total health-care expenditure. The model developed adequately predicted health-care costs for the years on which the model was developed (2000–2006), and adequately forecast health-care costs for the holdout year, 2007. The average adjusted R2 value was 0.57, with an average mean absolute deviation score of 34. The best predictors of total health-care expenditures were county population, the number of county health-care facilities, and county per capita personal income. The practical implications of the model are that it will provide public and private decision makers with a useful tool for forecasting short-term demand for health-care services, enabling better planning for health-care manpower, facility planning, and financial planning needs. The contribution of this paper contrasts with the earlier work in that it supports short-term operational, not strategic, planning needs. The paper's limitation is that it relies on data from one state. It should be tested in other, dissimilar, areas of the United States.