Veterans Care Home Business Plan: Structure & Strategy

Introduction and Overview

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 veterans 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, alongside meeting the medical needs of veterans who require this form of care. This business plan outlines the key elements of the new care home, including the organizational structure, environmental analysis, financial plan, and aspects of implementation and evaluation.

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 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 relate directly to the veterans. This role will oversee the maintenance and support staff as well as the facilities staff. The Director of Operations will have several direct reports who run the different functional departments that keep the home operating.

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, it is a critical role in the operation of the facility. The Director of Nursing is essential for maintaining a high standard of care and for identifying the best means of serving the veterans in the home's care — for example, helping to determine how to meet any special medical and psychiatric requirements that may arise. Both the Director of Nursing and the Director of Operations will report directly to the CEO, as will managers for the different line functions.

The different line functions will not be run at the Director level but at 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 a functional structure are that each department will be run by someone who specializes in how that department works. These departments can be very different from one another, and as such the functional managers will bear primary responsibility for hiring. Human resources — a function within the administrative department — will therefore largely focus on benefits and retention strategies, working with each functional manager to optimize staffing needs in line with the organization's strategic objectives.

With a functional structure and clear lines of authority, each role can be designed so that all tasks are covered by somebody. Furthermore, having clear lines of authority allows each staff member to focus on their work, ensuring it is done with 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 — a place where great people can do their service and sacrifice proud. Family, a commitment to excellence, and a detail orientation are the key values the organization expresses. These mission, vision, and values are clearly aligned with the organizational structure. The structure allows for the execution of the mission because it puts everybody in the best position possible to succeed. 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 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, there is a real opportunity to deliver on the promise that the home makes to veterans and their families.

Environmental and Competitive Analysis

The base structure for the strategic plan is the environmental analysis. The SWOT analysis is a common and effective framework for this purpose, as it evaluates the strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats facing an organization. The strategic plan is designed to align the strengths with the opportunities and 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. The first is that the team assembled to lead this new organization is made up of seasoned healthcare professionals, including people with specific executive-level experience at other veterans' care facilities. The second key strength is the passion of the leadership team. All members have come together to start this new home because they have worked in similar facilities and hold strong, passionate ideas about how a veterans home should run. This passion and commitment put them in a strong position to excel. A further strength is that the team has secured sufficient financing — a common obstacle for new ventures that does not appear to be a problem here.

That said, there are weaknesses that present genuine challenges. The first is that the home is new and therefore has no experience or track record, making the risk of something going wrong higher than it would be for an established facility. Even well-designed new systems carry a greater likelihood of early problems. The second weakness is a lack of brand recognition. A new, high-quality facility may help counter this, but many families choosing a home for their loved one look to a track record of successful service delivery. A lack of an established name or community history is therefore a meaningful weakness. Lack of staff is also critical. Turnover is already a chronic problem in healthcare, and while that creates some opportunity, finding an entire team of great people from scratch — and paying them before the home reaches capacity — represents a significant challenge. When recruiting is already difficult industry-wide, starting from zero makes it that much harder.

Several opportunities have created the conditions for this business. First, there is a large and growing veteran population in the area, and a meaningful subset of that population fits the target market — families who can afford a higher standard of care. Second, the area appears to be underserved by veterans care homes relative to the number of veterans who need such care. This location was specifically selected because of the mismatch between available care home spaces and estimated demand. Finally, many of the existing local care homes are not particularly well run, creating an immediate opportunity to attract residents who might otherwise switch facilities.

The main threats to this new venture begin with talent: if the local talent pool is not deep enough to recruit sufficient qualified staff, that could have a direct impact on service delivery and care standards. Another threat is the local economy and government funding formulas. Both affect the ability of clients and families to pay. Government funding formulas can change, and without a healthy local economy, potential clients may opt for less expensive alternatives. The third main threat is technological change. While new technology can sometimes reduce the cost of healthcare service delivery, it can also increase it when facilities are required to adopt expensive new systems. There is a genuine risk that the cost of service delivery could rise faster than the rates the home can charge its clients, placing profitability at risk.

Use of External Analysis

External environmental analysis is a valuable tool for a new business seeking to understand what opportunities exist in a market. By understanding those opportunities alongside the organization's strengths, management is better positioned to leverage those strengths to exploit promising openings. At this stage of the business plan, the analysis serves primarily to test the viability of the business as currently conceived. The defensive dimension of the SWOT framework also allows the organization to check for vulnerabilities where specific threats are positioned to exploit known weaknesses. Environmental analysis gives the company far more information with which to set out a strategy, and then to evaluate whether that strategy will truly help the organization meet its objectives (Nanda, 2015).

Competitive Analysis

Competitive analysis plays an important role in the strategic planning process. The key objective of competitive analysis is to understand competitors' strengths and weaknesses and use that knowledge to position one's own product or service more effectively (Entrepreneur Magazine, 2018). For a new business, this matters for two critical reasons. First, the business plan must be viable — is there room in the market for another company, or is a different strategy needed to compete effectively? Second, identifying gaps in competitor performance reveals where a new entrant can gain early traction. In the case of this new veterans care home, the assessment indicates that the market is underserved and that many existing competitors are not operating at the standard the new home intends to achieve.

References

Entrepreneur Magazine. (2018). Competitive analysis. Entrepreneur Magazine. Retrieved December 11, 2018, from https://www.entrepreneur.com/encyclopedia/competitive-analysis

MindTools. (2018). SWOT analysis. MindTools.com. Retrieved December 11, 2018, from https://www.mindtools.com/pages/article/newTMC_05.htm

Nanda, J. (2015). Interplay between environmental analysis and strategic management. LinkedIn. Retrieved December 11, 2015, from https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/interplay-between-environmental-analysis-strategic-prof-j-k-/

OrgCharting.com. (2018). Functional organizational structure introduction – advantages and disadvantages. OrgCharting.com. Retrieved December 11, 2018, from http://www.orgcharting.com/functional-organizational-introduction/

Rosado, J. (2018). What are the business organizational structures of a nursing home? Houston Chronicle. Retrieved December 11, 2018, from https://smallbusiness.chron.com/business-organizational-structures-nursing-home-75958.html