HS450 Unit 4 Mission and Vision Critique Example

Every Community We Serve, Except in the Capital Budget: A Unit 4 Mission and Vision Critique Using Collins and Porras

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Purdue University Global

HS450: Strategic Planning and Change Management for Health Care

Unit 4 Mission and Vision Critique

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[Date]

Halloway Therapy Partners, its statements and every spending figure are composite; the sources cited are real.

The Statements

Mission: "Restoring movement for every patient in every community we serve."

Vision: "The region's first choice for rehabilitation, known for clinical excellence and compassionate care."

Values, as listed on the website: excellence, compassion, access, teamwork.

Where the Money Went

Capital spending over the last three fiscal years, about 3.9 million dollars in total:

1. Sports performance center in the northern suburb: 61 percent.

2. Renovations at three suburban clinics: 21 percent.

3. Pelvic health and pediatric programs, equipment and training: 8 percent.

4. The two rural clinics: 4 percent.

5. The oldest clinic and its warm-water pool: 6 percent, all emergency repairs.

The sports performance center serves mostly commercially insured patients and cash-pay athletes. The rural clinics serve the highest share of Medicaid and traditional Medicare patients in the group.

A mission about every community, funded so that one community receives fifteen times what the two poorest receive, is a statement the budget does not believe.

The Collins and Porras Test

Collins and Porras (1996) separate a company's vision into two parts. Core ideology, its core purpose and core values, should be stable, authentic and true even if it became a competitive disadvantage. The envisioned future pairs a daring ten-to-thirty-year target with a concrete picture of reaching it; it describes where the organization is headed and should change only when achieved or abandoned.

Core purpose. Halloway's mission reads as a purpose, but a purpose must hold whatever the payment system does. The test question is whether Halloway would still restore movement in every community if rural clinics lost money for five more years. The spending suggests the answer has already been no. Either the purpose is not what the statement claims, or the organization has drifted from it.

Core values. Of the four listed values, access is contradicted most directly by the spending pattern. Collins and Porras argue that genuine core values are few, held regardless of reward, and visible in decisions. Excellence and teamwork appear in every therapy group's materials and guide no particular decision. Compassion is plausible but unmeasured. Access is the only value that distinguishes Halloway from a purely commercial competitor, and it is the one the budget ignores.

Envisioned future. "The region's first choice" is a comparison, not a vision; it does not describe what Halloway would look like if it succeeded. Collins and Porras recommend a big, hairy, audacious goal with a clear finish line. A vision that could guide spending might read: "Within ten years, no resident of the county will travel more than thirty minutes for specialized therapy." That would immediately raise questions about the rural clinics and the pool that the current vision never asks.

What the Contradiction Means

There are two honest ways to resolve it. Halloway could change its statements to match its spending, describing itself as a premier rehabilitation provider for the region's growth markets. Or it could change its spending to match its statements, directing a meaningful share of capital to the communities the mission names. Leaving both as they are has a cost: staff at the rural clinics read the mission every day and see the budget every year, and the gap erodes trust. Health care strategy texts note that mission statements matter only when they constrain choices (Ginter et al., 2018), and Halloway's currently constrains nothing. Research on hospital mission statements has linked their effect on performance to how closely everyday policies and resource allocation line up with them (Bart & Hupfer, 2004), which is exactly where Halloway's falls short.

How Other Health Organizations Handle the Same Tension

The tension between a broad mission and a concentrated budget is common in health care, not peculiar to Halloway. Many nonprofit hospitals adopt missions about every community while placing new services where insured patients live, and they manage the gap by publishing community benefit reports that show what they spend on less profitable services. Halloway is a private group without that reporting duty, which makes the gap easier to leave unexamined. Borrowing the practice voluntarily, a short annual statement of what the group spends in its rural and lower-income communities, would turn the mission from a slogan into something the board and staff can check. It would also prepare Halloway for employer contracts, since large employers increasingly ask providers to show how they serve workers across the county, not only in the suburbs.

What Staff Said

Two rural clinic directors, interviewed for this critique, described the mission as "the poster in the break room." One noted that her clinic's treatment tables were older than some of her assistants. Neither opposed the sports performance center; both questioned why the mission had never been mentioned in a capital discussion. Their comments do not prove the spending was wrong, but they show how the gap between words and money is felt where the mission claims to apply.

Recommendations

1. The board should decide explicitly whether access to all communities is a core value. If it is, capital planning should include a minimum share for rural sites.

2. Replace "first choice for rehabilitation" with an envisioned future that has a measurable finish line.

3. Reduce the values to those that guide real decisions, and add a short description of what each requires.

4. Report capital spending against the mission annually, so the comparison made here becomes routine.

A Test the Board Could Use

One practical test follows from the framework. Before each capital decision, the board could ask which community the spending serves and whether the mission, read literally, would support it. The sports performance center would pass for its suburb. The question is whether any project would ever pass for the rural clinics if the test were never asked. Asking it costs no more than one extra line on each capital request form.

Limits of the Critique

Three years of capital spending is one lens. Operating spending, charity care and staff decisions might show more alignment. The sports performance center may also subsidize other services through its margins, which would complicate the picture, and the Unit 7 seminar takes up that question for the pool. The critique does not claim the spending was wrong, only that it contradicts the statements as written.

References

Bart, C. K., & Hupfer, M. (2004). Mission statements in Canadian hospitals. Journal of Health Organization and Management, 18(2), 92-110. https://doi.org/10.1108/14777260410538889

Collins, J. C., & Porras, J. I. (1996). Building your company's vision. Harvard Business Review, 74(5), 65-77.

Ginter, P. M., Duncan, W. J., & Swayne, L. E. (2018). The strategic management of health care organizations (8th ed.). Wiley.