Lourdes Health System -
Strategic Planning Retreat

Overview
Lourdes Health System is one of southern New Jersey's leading health care providers. The system is comprised of Our Lady of Lourdes Medical Center, a 410-bed regional referral center located in Camden, and Lourdes Medical Center of Burlington County, a 249-bed community hospital located in Willingboro, NJ. Lourdes is committed to enhancing the health and well being of southern New Jersey residents and particularly devoted to caring for those most in need.

With the regional health system landscape undergoing enormous competitive pressures and changes, members of the administrative team met to develop a 10-year Strategic Plan to navigate through this competitive landscape and remain a successful and thriving organization.

The Challenge
The Lourdes Health System held a Strategic Planning Retreat to:

1. Increase awareness of key environmental trends and to understand the potential impact on Our Lady of Lourdes Health System
2. Gain awareness of critical success factors for future development and growth
3. Engage participants in considering strategies to effectively position the organization
4. Begin to build a foundation for creating their 10-year strategic plan

The Solution
Vistacom's audience response services were used to solve Objective # 3: Engage participants in considering strategies to effectively position the organization. First, participants prioritized the top local and national trends that would have the greatest impact on the southern New Jersey health care market over the next five years. Based on this environmental assessment they then evaluated the attributes they deemed were necessary for success into the future. This was done through a mean score comparison of evaluation questions on each of the attributes. They also evaluated future trends in the distribution of health care services and how well they were positioned for success in their market. The results of which defined their future strategies. In addition to providing real time results for evaluation and discussion, Vistacom generated custom reports and provided the raw data for further analysis.

How Lourdes Health System benefited
The use of Vistacom's audience response technology enabled an administratively diverse group of participants to quickly, easily and accurately tabulate opinions about healthcare trends and attributes needed to assure long-term health system success. The use of Vistacom's mean score comparisons and custom data reporting provided an effective decision-making tool in the creation of the 10-year strategic plan.

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