Middleboro Casebook Assignment

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Choose the Middleboro Casebook on the far left hand read and compare case study 5 pages 167-204 and case study number 6 pages 167-204. This assignment requires you to compare Webster Health System (Case Five) and MIDCARE, INC. (Case Six) in regard to their respective preparedness to carry out an effective strategic planning process and to then subsequently implement the plan.  Please note that I am NOT asking for a SWOT analysis or any other kind of environmental analysis, nor am I asking you to propose strategic options.  Rather, you should review the lectures in the course and the textbook chapters that address the institutional requirements for success in the planning process and discuss how you see the hospitals’ leadership teams’ (including the boards, executive managers, and organized medical staffs) abilities to meet such requirements. To help get you started, I recommend you consider the following:

a.  The experience, cohesiveness, and commitment to strategic thinking of the executive management team and governing boards of the two hospitals;

b.  Evidence of their strategic mind-set;  (This concept was addressed in a lecture earlier in the course.)

c.  The institutional relationship of the management teams with key stakeholders such as the governing board members and medical staff, at the least;

d.  Evidence of the management teams’ knowledge of service area trends and developments;

e.  Recent developments at the hospitals indicating past approaches to strategic planning and management activities.

I don’t consider the above list to be all encompassing, so you are welcome to structure your response around other points of comparison as well.  Focus your ideas on communication and teamwork within each of the two organizations, the effective use of organizational structure to form meaningful partnerships, engagement with outside expertise that might support strategic thinking and implementation, and a sense of urgency to address current and future developments.

I expect you to provide details to support your claims and for you to use parenthetical citation of page numbers from the text books and other sources. This assignment requires you to understand what is needed to formulate a strategic plan (see prior lectures and text book assigned readings) and to then read the cases carefully to find out if you think either or both hospital management teams are ready to undertake this task, or to support an argument that one seems better prepared than the other.  I expect prose composition, although bullet points can be used as appropriate within your response.