Department of Neurology Strategic Plan

Background

We in the Department of Neurology are committed to achieving the primary missions of an academic medical center: providing excellent clinical care, conducting research that will improve the lives of neurology patients around the world, and education and training of future neurologists and neuroscientists. To those traditional goals, we have added: build a culture within our department where people feel valued and supported.

We set out in 2018 to define specific ways to succeed in those mission areas. Our strategic planning process involved the entire department, patients, patients’ families, as well as leadership in the medical school and the health system. In all, we received input from more than 100 people through one-on-one interviews, focus groups and surveys.

After careful consideration, we articulated our plan. We summarized our Strategic Plan into our mission, vision, values, priorities and goals. We then took each goal and identified specific ways to reach it – we went from “lofty” goal to “granular” tactic. Lofty is a good place to start but granular gets it done. Of the 122 project ideas generated, we selected 28 that would best achieve our mission and vision.

We've also created a dashboard to measure our success in all these efforts. As we implement the plan, we are watching the dashboard to see at-a-glance where we're succeeding and where we still need to improve. We are committed to the values and goals of the plan -- and to transparency -- and so we want to share our dashboard with you. You'll see we're not where we want to be yet, but we are committed to ongoing improvement and will continue to post updates.

We are committed to the values and goals of the plan and to ongoing improvement as we strive to reach our mission and vision.

We in the Department of Neurology are committed to achieving the primary missions of an academic medical center:

Clinical Care: Provide excellent clinical care

Research: Conduct research that will improve the lives of neurology patients around the world

Education: Educate and train future neurologists and neuroscientists

To those traditional academic medical center goals, we have also added:

Culture: Build a culture within our department where people feel valued and supported

Doing that right doesn’t happen by accident. We set out nearly two years ago to define specific ways to succeed in those mission areas. Our strategic planning process involved the entire department, patients, patients’ families, as well as leadership in the medical school and the health system. In all, we received input from more than 100 people through one-on-one interviews, focus groups and surveys.

After much thought and effort, we articulated our plan. We summarized our Strategic Plan into our mission, vision, values, priorities and goals.

We then took each goal and identified specific ways to reach it – we went from “lofty” goal to “granular” tactic. Lofty is a good place to start but granular gets it done. In all, 122 project ideas were generated. We selected 28 projects to focus on first.

We are now in the midst of creating a dashboard tool to measure our success on all these granular projects. As we implement our strategic plan, we will watch the dashboard to see at-a- glance where we’re succeeding and where we need to find a better way. Stay tuned…we’ll keep you updated.