How Healthcare Strategic Planning is Like the College Football Player Portal

On November 1, 2025, former coach and sports commentator Nick Saban said something like – so much of college football is external. A coach needs to control what he can control.  His comments were in response to one of the other commentators saying that coaches can’t control much due to the player portal and players changing schools so often. My immediate thought was that sounds a lot like healthcare right now. So much of what we deal with in healthcare is external – Medicaid cuts, rising uninsured population, managed care rates, Medicare rates, supply costs, and the list goes on and on. I’ve heard from several clients last year something like – we can’t plan strategically with so much change occurring. We don’t know what’s going to happen next week, much less in five years. I keep hearing that we can only plan up to three years and maybe year to year. Hogwash I say!

We can and we must plan ahead despite the uncertainties and unknowns. Healthcare has been changing since I entered the field in 1990. There are some relative certainties – reimbursement will not go up, there will be staffing shortages, quality care and customer service will be imperative, meeting the health and healthcare needs of our population will make us successful, cost-effective, value-based care is required, technology is in continuous evolution, and others I’m sure I’m missing right now.

I’m encouraging health systems and hospitals to not just plan for the next three to five years, but to include some thoughts and strategies for the next ten years. In another blog I’ll discuss what those ten-year trends may be.

Advice – get your boards, leadership, and yes staff together and create a vision of the future, a picture of your current situation and create a step-by-step plan to close the gaps. To plan for ten years out, create scenarios and discuss how the organization might plan for each.