ABSTRACT

The very term 'business plan' is, in part, responsible for the reluctance of many clinicians to get involved in its development. In fact, a business plan is a document which sets out an organization's short and long-term plans. It is not uncommon for strategic and service plans to appear in separate documents, since there is no reason why they should be published at the same time. By and large, strategies change more slowly than service plans unless there have been some drastic changes in factors outside our control. There are as many ways of developing a strategic plan as there are people doing it, and there is considerable scope for the exercise of personal preference. However, there are key stages which have to be undertaken if the strategic plan is to be a sound one. A contingency plan is really an alternative strategy, and we may well develop one as a by-product of strategy generation.