Introduction This business plan is for a care home for veterans. The home will be a new facility, a new business, and will serve the needs of the local community. In terms of positioning, the veteran's care home will serve a slightly premium market. While recognizing the role that government agencies have as payers, the home will also be able to cater to the needs of veterans whose families wish to offer a higher standard of amenities and service, to go along with meeting the medical needs of veterans who need this form of care. This business plan will outline the key elements of the new care home, including the organizational structure, environmental analysis, financial plan and aspects of implementation and evaluation.

Part 1: Organizational Structure

The organizational structure of the home will be similar to those of other care homes. Heading up the home will be the Chief Executive Officer, who will answer to the home's Board of Directors. The Board will be comprised of members experienced in the operation of care homes and other medical and veterans facilities. The board will provide strategic guidance, and assist with the selection of key executives.

The CEO will have a team of executives that will be responsible for running the home. The most important role is probably the Director of Operations, as this will be the primary point person for oversight of all aspects of the business that have to do with the veterans. This role will run the maintenance and support staff, as well as the facilities staff. The Director of Operations will have several reports who run the different functional departments that keep the home running.

The other key executive will be the Director of Nursing. This role will be the person in charge of nurses and other caregivers. As such, this is a critical role in the operation of the facility. The Director of Nursing role is essential for the maintenance of a high standard of care, and for identifying the best means of serving the veterans in our care – for example helping to determine how to meet any special medical and psychiatric requirements that there might be. The Director of Nursing and the Director of Operations will both answer to the CEO, as will managers for the different line functions.

The different line functions will not be run at the Director level, but the senior management level, as these are typically smaller departments. Administrative, sales and marketing functions, as well as accounting and compliance, will fall under these smaller departments.

The benefits of having this functional structure are that each department will be run by someone that specializes in how that department works. These different departments can be very different, and as such the functional managers will bear the primary responsibility for hiring. Human resources, a function within administrative, will therefore largely focus on benefits and retention strategies, working with each functional manager to optimize their staffing needs in line with the organization's strategic objectives.

With a functional structure and clear lines of authority, each role can be designed in such a way that all tasks are covered by somebody. Furthermore, having clear lines of authority allows each staff member to focus on their work, ensuring that it is done to the highest attention to detail and the greatest standard of care possible.

Mission, Vision and Values

The mission of the organization is to provide the highest standard of veterans' care in the area. The vision is of a home where veterans and their families feel honored for their service, where great people can do their service and sacrifice proud. Family and a commitment to excellence, as well as a detail orientation are the key values that we express. These mission, vision and values are clearly aligned with the organizational structure. The...

Each functional unit is therefore in a position to focus on productivity and efficiency as well as optimizing the talents of each person, without being distracted by trying to master too many skills at once (OrgCharting,com, 2018).
The vision and the values statement provide further guidance for each department within the organizational structure. Each department can look to the vision and values as examples of what needs to be done, how it needs to be done, and what a member of the team should value as part of their work life. When all of these factors are closely aligned with the structure of the organization, and its strategic mission, then there is opportunity to deliver on the promise that the home makes to veterans and their families.

Part 2: Environmental Analysis and Setting Strategic Goals

The base structure for the strategic plan is the environmental analysis. The SWOT analysis is a common and effective framework for this, as it evaluates the strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats. The strategic plan is designed to align the strengths with the opportunities and seek to eliminate any weaknesses that leave the organization vulnerable to threats (MindTools, 2018).

Despite being newly-founded, the company already has some key strengths to draw on that will help it to excel. The first of these is that the team assembled to lead this new organization is made up of seasoned health care pros, including people with specific experience at executive levels of other veterans' care facilities. The second key strength is the passion of the leadership team. All have come together to start this new home because they have worked in other, similar facilities. They have strong, passionate ideas about how a veterans home should run, and a clear vision of how to bring that type of home to life. This passion and commitment on the part of the leadership team puts them into a position to excel. A further strength is that the team has been able to get enough financing together. A lot of new ventures struggle for lack of financing but that does not appear as though it will be a problem here.

That said, there are nevertheless some weaknesses that will be a challenge that need to be overcome. The first such weakness is that the home is new. Thus, it has no experience or track record, and as such there is a higher risk of something going wrong. The systems are going to be very well-designed, but new systems are always more likely to have something go wrong, even if they are great systems. The second weakness is a lack of brand name. Having a fancy, splashy new facility is certainly a means to counter that, but a lot of people also like to look to a track record of successful service delivery when choosing a home for their loved one. So lack of an established name or history in the community is certainly a weakness that in some cases will need to be overcome. Lack of staff is also a critical weakness. Turnover is already a problem in healthcare, which in a sense provides opportunity, but it is still important to find an entire team of great people, and pay them even if the home isn't full. If recruiting is a perpetual problem in this industry, then certainly it will be that much harder when starting from scratch, because you need to find that many more staff, and might have trouble getting the best people initially.

There are a number of different opportunities that have created this business. First, there are a lot of veterans in the area, and the population is growing. In many cases, there are veterans who fit the target market where there are families can afford a higher standard of care. Second, the area does appear to be underserved with veterans care homes, despite there being a lot of veterans. This area was specifically selected because of…