HCS 498 Week 1 Mission and Vision Statements Example

Home Is the Measure: Writing the Mission, Vision and Values That Open a Five-Year Strategic Plan for a Nonprofit Inpatient Rehabilitation Hospital

[Student Name]

University of Phoenix

HCS/498: Strategic Decision Making for Health Care Managers

Week 1 Assignment

[Instructor Name]

[Date]

The rehabilitation hospital, its board and its figures are composites written for a model paper; industry data and clinical guidance come from the sources listed.

At the start of its first strategic planning retreat in six years, the board chair of a composite 70-bed nonprofit inpatient rehabilitation hospital asked each of the 11 board members to write down the hospital's mission from memory. No one could. The official statement ran to 74 words and mentioned excellence, compassion, innovation, stewardship and the entire continuum of care. The board agreed that a five-year plan needed a clear starting point, and the planning committee was asked to write new mission and vision statements and a short set of values. This paper presents those statements and the reasoning behind them.

The Organization

The hospital treats adults recovering from strokes, brain and spinal cord injuries, amputations, major joint and orthopedic trauma and complex medical illness. Patients receive at least three hours of therapy a day, five days a week, from physical, occupational and speech therapists, with physician and rehabilitation nursing oversight. It discharges about 1,550 patients a year, and about three quarters of them go home. Most patients come from four acute care hospitals within 30 miles.

The Market Around It

Inpatient rehabilitation is a specialized but competitive field. In its March report, the Medicare Payment Advisory Commission (2025) noted that in 2023 the fee-for-service Medicare program and its beneficiaries spent $9.6 billion on 404,000 stays in about 1,200 facilities nationwide, that fee-for-service Medicare accounted for about half of all stays and that for-profit companies continued to open new facilities. One such company opened a 50-bed hospital 12 miles away in 2024. The planning committee concluded that the hospital's statements had to say plainly what makes it worth choosing.

Mission Versus Vision

A mission is present tense: the reason the hospital is open this morning, for whom and doing what. A vision is future tense: a place the hospital intends to stand in some years and does not stand in yet. Collis and Rukstad (2008) argued that most organizations cannot state their strategy simply and that a concise statement of objective, scope and advantage is what allows employees to make consistent choices. The committee used their idea as a test: each statement had to help a nurse, a therapist or a board member decide what to do.

The Old Statement

The 74-word mission listed values rather than purpose and described services the hospital did not offer, such as outpatient and home care, which belong to partner organizations. It did not mention the outcome patients and families care about most.

The New Mission

We help adults recovering from serious illness and injury regain the strength and skills to return home and live their lives.

The statement is 19 words. It names the people served, adults recovering from serious illness and injury, and it names the work, rebuilding strength and skills. Its final clause states the outcome: return home. The phrase live their lives reminds staff that going home is a means to an end: a patient who returns home but cannot manage stairs, meals or conversation has not been fully served.

Why Home Is the Measure

Returning to the community is the outcome the field itself tracks, and the clinical case for inpatient rehabilitation rests on it. Winstein et al. (2016), in national guidelines for adult stroke rehabilitation, recommended that stroke survivors who qualify and have access to inpatient rehabilitation receive it in preference to care in a skilled nursing facility. The mission commits the hospital to a result it can be measured on, not to an activity it merely performs.

The New Vision

By 2030, to be the region's first choice for rehabilitation, with more patients returning home than at any comparable hospital.

The vision has a date, a scope, the region, and two measurable ambitions: being chosen first by patients, families and referring hospitals, and leading comparable hospitals in discharge to the community.

Values

The committee kept four values and defined each by behavior. Respect: staff introduce themselves, knock and ask before touching. Candor: families hear the honest outlook on recovery, early. Teamwork: therapists, nurses and physicians plan goals together at a weekly conference with the patient. Stewardship: every program must show that it improves outcomes or lowers cost.

Testing the Statements

The committee applied three tests. Is the mission specific to this organization? A general hospital could not use it without change. Does the vision describe a future not yet reached? The hospital currently ranks behind its new competitor on community discharge and on referrals from one of its four partner hospitals. Would staff act differently? Therapists said the mission gave them a reason to push for home safety visits before discharge, which some had considered optional.

How the Statements Will Guide the Plan

The mission and vision will screen every proposal in later sections. During the retreat, a proposal to open a long-term ventilator unit was discussed. It would fill beds, but its patients rarely go home, so it fits poorly with a mission measured by return home and was set aside for further study. A proposal to add a home transition program, with therapists visiting patients' homes before and after discharge, fits both statements closely and will be examined in the SWOT and goals sections.

What the Statements Leave Out

The committee also agreed on what the statements would not say. They do not mention outpatient therapy, home health or long-term care, which partner organizations provide, because naming them would invite the hospital to compete with its own referral sources. They do not use the words excellence or world-class, which cost nothing to write and commit the hospital to nothing it can measure. And they do not describe the building, the equipment or the brand, since patients choose rehabilitation for results, not facilities. Leaving these things out was as deliberate as putting home at the center.

Communicating the Statements

The statements will be posted in every therapy gym and patient room, printed on the back of staff badges and read at the start of each weekly team conference for the first three months. New employees will discuss them in orientation with a patient who returned home.

Conclusion

A mission nobody could recall has been replaced with one sentence that names the people served, the work and the outcome. The vision sets a dated, regional and measurable ambition, and four values describe how staff will behave on the way. Together they give the rest of the strategic plan a filter: every strength, threat, goal and proposal will be judged by whether it helps more patients go home and live their lives.

References

Collis, D. J., & Rukstad, M. G. (2008). Can you say what your strategy is? Harvard Business Review, 86(4), 82-90.

Medicare Payment Advisory Commission. (2025). Inpatient rehabilitation facility services. In Report to the Congress: Medicare payment policy (pp. 247-263). https://www.medpac.gov/wp-content/uploads/2025/03/Mar25_Ch8_MedPAC_Report_To_Congress_SEC.pdf

Winstein, C. J., Stein, J., Arena, R., Bates, B., Cherney, L. R., Cramer, S. C., Deruyter, F., Eng, J. J., Fisher, B., Harvey, R. L., Lang, C. E., MacKay-Lyons, M., Ottenbacher, K. J., Pugh, S., Reeves, M. J., Richards, L. G., Stiers, W., & Zorowitz, R. D. (2016). Guidelines for adult stroke rehabilitation and recovery: A guideline for healthcare professionals from the American Heart Association/American Stroke Association. Stroke, 47(6), e98-e169. https://doi.org/10.1161/STR.0000000000000098