The planning in health is an administrative process rather than purely epidemiological whose purpose is to decide what you want, where you want to go on a time certain, the actions to be taken, the means to be used and the individuals who are responsible for go as far as desired and achieve the organizational objectives of the future in a more effective way it is essential to create improvement strategies, such as programs, projects, health plans and activities aimed at improving the health conditions of the communities, improving the quality of care and dignifying the role of professionals and health centers.
In general terms, healthcare facility design and planning is implemented in at least nine steps, which describe the planning, implementation, and evaluation of the process; however, each company and each administrator, executive, leader, president or leader, must design the mechanisms, instruments, and methodology that it deems most appropriate for the particular case we had to handle, which is why the steps vary depending on the situation that each company finds.
Strategic health planning is a system that seeks to order actions in health centers, public, private hospitals, or clinics to establish objectives related to improvements in service processes or optimization of medical resources. This strategic planning has different moments of:
- Analysis
- Synthesis
- Projection
- Design
To comply with these moments, it is necessary to establish key steps, which may have minimal variations according to the conditions of the entity where the strategy is applied, but which in essence are:
- Identify health problems to meet the needs
Proper health planning responds to local needs; Therefore, it is necessary to have the characteristics of being flexible, adaptable, simple, coherent, realistic, and integral.
In this step, protocols for disease prevention, control in the case of occurrence of viruses or unknown diseases are generated, and the needs to extinguish, for example, epidemics and even pandemics, are identified.
- Establish an order of priorities
Human diseases and health do not stop. Therefore it is essential to establish what is emerging, urgent, priority, and not urgent. Without neglecting prevention. In this sense, correct facility planning and design in healthcare thinks about establishing the needs of doctors, medicines, and infrastructure of the health center.
- Develop health and prevention programs
Correct communication and care protocols can prevent medical catastrophes. It is then the responsibility of the strategic health planners to guide towards the development of optimal programs for each area, as well as preventive campaigns for all the social protagonists. Programs that help to address issues such as unwanted pregnancy, flu, human papilloma, and countless cyclic viruses in the society where they develop.
- Evaluate the impact on the population
Once this strategic work is completed, a stage of socialization of the results and protocols must be fulfilled from the leaders of the organization, which had to be previously involved in the plan, to the general practitioners or front-line hospital actors; this with the objective that the plan is integral and represents all the actors.
- Implement improvement measures
In all cases, it is necessary to allow a reasonable amount of time (minimum 6 months) to then measure the internalization of the planning in the whole work team of the health center. At this time, quantitative and qualitative measurement processes and techniques are incorporated to keep records of the evolution of the plan.