Strategic Planning
Turning uncertainty, complexity, and competing agendas into clear strategic choices.
Strategy is not a document. It is a disciplined process for defining what matters most, what success actually means, and what an organization is willing to do, defer, or stop doing to move forward. I help healthcare organizations clarify direction, test assumptions, confront tradeoffs, and translate ambition into choices that are practical, coherent, and implementation-ready.
A selection of strategic planning engagements shaped by hard questions, clear choices, and implementation-minded thinking.
Reframing Behavioral Health as a Strategic Asset
Large community teaching health system, Southwestern U.S.
The problem
Behavioral health was split across settings, each with different incentives and definitions of success, creating misaligned decisions, paralysis, and sustained losses.
The intervention
We reframed it as a system-level problem, aligned leadership around shared outcomes, and forced explicit tradeoffs.
The outcome
Within six months, the addiction recovery center moved from seven-figure monthly losses to break-even.
Reclaiming Market Share by Redefining Local Inpatient Care
Community health system, Western U.S.
Challenge:
As patients increasingly left the market for higher-acuity care at academic health systems an hour away, a regional health system needed to counter market share erosion, capitalize on competitor weakness, and rethink how local inpatient services should grow and differentiate.
Result:
Produced a market-informed inpatient strategy that repositioned local service lines for growth, identified opportunities to reduce outmigration, and gave leadership a clearer basis for future investment and capability-building decisions.
Rethinking How Care Should Be Distributed Across a Province
Public provincial health system, Atlantic Canada
Challenge:
Demographic change, workforce shortages, aging facilities, and uneven access were forcing a province-wide public health system to reconsider what services should be delivered where, and how the overall model could remain sustainable.
Result:
Developed a province-wide care strategy that redefined service distribution across the system, aligned future planning with population need and system constraints, and created a stronger foundation for long-term access and sustainability.
Connecting a Scattered Pediatric Enterprise
Large regional health system, Midwestern U.S.
Challenge:
Already a leading pediatric provider in the market, a regional health system needed to determine how a physically fragmented pediatric platform could compete, grow, and function more coherently when consolidation and centralization were becoming the prevailing industry model.
Result:
Produced an enterprise pediatric strategy that reframed physical fragmentation as a distributed care model, sharpened decisions about where services should live, and created a more credible path for growth in a market dominated by a stronger pediatric brand.