How Do I Develop a Business Unit Plan to Expand Coronary Care Unit Capacity?

The decision to expand a hospital coronary unit requires careful planning and long-range forecasting. You need to consider additional space, cost, personnel, equipment and marketing requirements. Plan for unexpected contingencies that can affect your hospital's return on this investment. A profitable expansion is likely to succeed to the extent a demand for the added services exists or can be created.

Instructions

• 1

  Gather the data necessary to create a viable business unit expansion plan. Consider the document a well-reasoned presentation of what is possible and desirable, but explain fully problem areas that may arise. Estimate the probable range of costs for each proposed change. Deal with each entity, such as the catheterization lab or operating theater, as not only a separate entity but also as part of the whole. Many entities' requirements may differ, but patient treatment and care links them to each other.

• 2

  Review the demographic projections for the hospital's primary service area. Seek data on whether an older population will predominate in the following five- to 20-year time frame or if a younger population with less need for coronary care is expected to predominate.

• 3

  Work with employees in the unit to collect relevant information and ideas. Use the changes inevitable in any expansion to identify improvements they consider important. Meet with them individually and attend unit meetings. Write down all their suggestions for later consideration. You probably will need assistance in collecting some information, such as likely future patient treatments and the cost of providing the technology for those treatments.

• 4

  Make an outline of the plan and check it with senior administrators and other stakeholders. Include the target population, as well as space, personnel, equipment, finance and marketing requirements. List in the outline where you intend to include an executive summary, charts illustrating the financial statements, renderings of the new space arrangement and a timeline for phasing in the new areas and personnel.

• 5

  Write the text and supporting documents required for each section of your outline. Assume that many people who read the plan you prepare will concentrate on the parts that pertain to them and skim the rest. Every section will be read carefully by someone. Write each section with sufficient information to demonstrate that you have thoroughly researched each topic.

• 6

  Answer all the questions before anyone has to ask. Describe new equipment and list the price bids Purchasing received. Explain what added personnel is needed to operate the equipment and the expertise required. Indicate where the old and new equipment will be located in the remodeled or new space, and state the work and expense to get them placed and tested. Estimate how long any equipment will be unavailable during the changeover and what impact that may have on patient diagnosis and treatment.

• 7

  Solicit comments on the draft. Get someone with writing skills to help polish the text and review the grammar and spelling. Prepare a final version that is appropriately bound, and distribute the requisite number of copies.