HCS 498 Week 4 Strategic Goals and Objectives Example

From Twenty-Six Hours to Four: Strategic Goals and Measurable Objectives That Widen the Doors of a Nonprofit Rehabilitation Hospital

[Student Name]

University of Phoenix

HCS/498: Strategic Decision Making for Health Care Managers

Week 4 Assignment

[Instructor Name]

[Date]

The rehabilitation hospital, its baselines and its budgets are composites written for a model paper; frameworks and national figures come from the sources listed.

The rehabilitation hospital's planning committee ended its SWOT analysis with two options for the core of the plan, faster authorization and appeals and a home transition program offered as the basis for a partnership, plus an enabling need to rebuild the therapy workforce. This section converts those choices into goals and measurable objectives. Every goal answers the mission, helping adults return home and live their lives, and every objective carries a baseline, a target, a date, an owner and a first-year cost.

Goals and Objectives: The Difference

A goal describes a result the organization wants; an objective is a measurable step toward it. The SMART test the committee used goes back to Doran (1981), who argued that a manager's objective should say exactly what will change, show how the change will be counted, name who will do it, stay within reach and carry a date. An objective that no one owns and no one can measure is a hope, and a strategic plan full of hopes changes nothing.

Goal One: Faster Access for Referred Patients

This goal answers the SWOT's most immediate threat, Medicare Advantage denials, and its weakness in slow authorization.

Objective 1.1: Reduce the median time from referral to authorization request from 26 hours to four hours by December 2026, by moving requests to plans' electronic portals and staffing admissions until 9 p.m. Owner: vice president of patient access. First-year cost: $140,000 for two admissions coordinators and software.

Objective 1.2: Reduce the Medicare Advantage denial rate on first request from 14% to 8% by June 2027. Owner: vice president of patient access, with the medical director reviewing criteria.

Objective 1.3: Appeal every denial whose documentation meets traditional Medicare coverage criteria, overturning at least half, beginning January 2026 when federal decision deadlines take effect. Owner: utilization review manager.

Goal Two: Home Transition Service

This goal builds on the hospital's strongest outcome, discharge to the community.

Objective 2.1: Launch a home transition service by September 2026, in which a therapist visits the patient's home before discharge and a therapist or nurse visits or video-calls within seven days after. Owner: chief clinical officer. First-year cost: $310,000, including three therapist positions and a vehicle.

Objective 2.2: Enroll at least 60% of stroke and brain injury discharges going home by June 2027.

Objective 2.3: Raise the risk-adjusted community discharge rate from 69.5% to 72% by fiscal year 2028, while keeping potentially preventable readmissions below the national rate of 8.8% reported by the Medicare Payment Advisory Commission (2025).

Goal Three: A Formal Acute Care Partnership

This goal answers the threat of competitor joint ventures.

Objective 3.1: Present a partnership proposal, built around the home transition service and shared outcome reporting, to the unaffiliated acute care hospital by March 2027, and sign an agreement by September 2027. Owner: chief executive officer.

Objective 3.2: Increase admissions from the partner by 25% in the first full year after the agreement.

Goal Four: A Rebuilt Therapy Workforce

Neither core goal works without therapists, so this goal enables the others.

Objective 4.1: Reduce therapist vacancies from 14% to 6% by December 2027. Owner: vice president of human resources.

Objective 4.2: Start a neurologic rehabilitation residency with two local universities, graduating four therapists a year from 2027, with a two-year commitment to stay. First-year cost: $180,000.

Objective 4.3: Cut contract therapy spending by half by fiscal year 2028.

Financial Result

The committee did not set a separate financial goal, because the plan's revenue depends on the four goals. It set one financial objective to test them: raise the total margin from 2.1% to 4.0% by fiscal year 2029. Fewer denials, more partner admissions and lower contract costs account for most of the projected improvement.

Balanced Scorecard View

Kaplan and Norton (1996) presented the scorecard as a management system that links long-term strategy to short-term action by tracking a few measures from each of four viewpoints, money, customers, internal work and the organization's capacity to learn. Grouping the objectives this way shows balance. Patient: community discharge, readmissions and enrollment in the transition service. Process: authorization time, denial rate and appeal success. People: vacancies and residency graduates. Finance: contract spending and total margin.

SMART Test

The committee checked each objective against the five criteria. All eleven are specific and measurable with a baseline drawn from hospital records. Each has an owner by title. Achievability was tested with outside comparisons: the four-hour authorization target is what the hospital already achieves for traditional Medicare referrals, and the 72% community discharge target is within reach of the top quarter of comparable hospitals. All objectives are dated, and all link to a SWOT item and the mission.

Resources

First-year costs for the new positions, software, residency and vehicle total about $630,000, of which the hospital's foundation has pledged $250,000 and operating improvements are expected to fund the rest by year two.

Risks to the Objectives

The committee named the risks most likely to knock objectives off course. Plans may not meet the new federal decision deadlines at first, which would slow progress on denials; the utilization review manager will log every late decision for complaints to the plans and to regulators. The partner hospital may choose a for-profit joint venture instead; the chief executive will keep a second acute hospital informed as an alternative. Therapist recruitment may lag if competitors raise bonuses, which is why the residency builds a pipeline the hospital controls. Finally, the home transition service may enroll fewer patients than planned if families decline home visits, so enrollment will be reviewed monthly from launch.

Monitoring

Owners will report monthly to the executive team on process measures and quarterly to the board on the full scorecard. Any objective off target for two consecutive quarters will receive a written recovery plan.

Conclusion

Four goals, faster access, a home transition service, a partnership and a rebuilt therapy workforce, turn the SWOT's findings into commitments. Eleven objectives give each goal a baseline, a target, a date, an owner and a cost, and a balanced scorecard keeps outcomes, processes, people and finances in view together. Next week, these goals become the decision the board will be asked to approve.

References

Doran, G. T. (1981). There's a S.M.A.R.T. way to write management's goals and objectives. Management Review, 70(11), 35-36.

Kaplan, R. S., & Norton, D. P. (1996). Using the balanced scorecard as a strategic management system. Harvard Business Review, 74(1), 75-85.

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