The Importance of Strategic Planning and Management in Health: A Systematic Review

Introduction: Strategic planning is a process that involves reviewing the organization’s needs, environmental conditions, customer, organizational capabilities and weaknesses that are designed with the goal of deciding on the organization’s mission, goals, and strategies. Each organization’s strategy is a set of goals. In this study, we decided to have a review on strategic planning in health domain. Methods: Embase, PubMed/MEDLINE, ISI/Web of Science (WOS), Scopus, and Iranian databases, such as MagIran, SID, and Irandoc, were searched from 2000 to 2017. Also, the grey literature (via Google Scholar) was searched. Studies written in English or in Persian were searched, and keywords used included Strategic Management, Strategic Health Planning, and Health strategic management. Results: Based on the inclusion criteria, the search of databases resulted in 30 articles that fully covered the studies that carried out a full strategic management and planning in health. The results of the present study indicated that RBV is used for strategic health planning and RDT has a strong influence on strategic decision-making. Strategic planning is one of the most important issues in a productive health care center. The decision-making levels in the health sector can be divided into three strategic, middle, and operational categories. During the strategic planning process in the health sector, attention is drawn to the two approaches to RDT) Resource dependency theory) and RBV (Resource based view). Conclusion: Health by investing and using resources and key talents of management, in the strategic planning process increases the organization’s capacity and its ability to face changing circumstances and environments. Studies show that the success of a strategic planning in a health center depends on participation of beneficiaries, namely doctors, nurses and managers.