Updating ICHP's Strategic Plan
by Scott A. Meyers, Executive Vice President
January 25, 2010
President Karpinski has provided a comprehensive summary of the 2009
ICHP Leadership Retreat held at Allerton Conference Center outside
Monticello, Illinois. For those of you who have never visited the
conference center, it is a pleasant surprise to find such a beautiful,
art-filled and peaceful sight nestled deep in the countryside of
central Illinois. It was the backdrop for the most recent update of the
ICHP Strategic Plan.
The existing plan was created in 2007 and
has been tweaked a little since its initial adoption by the Board of
Directors that fall. This year at the Leadership Retreat, the
participants reviewed the plan to celebrate its successes and discard
those goals and objectives that are no longer relevant.
First
let me share an overview of the plan to give you a better understanding
of its purpose and importance. The plan is comprised of three major
goals:
- Association Growth
- Exceptional Practice
- High Performing Organization
Each of these goals have a variety of strategies to reach targets within the plan.
- Association Growth
- Increase membership
- Increase public awareness/acceptance of the pharmacist as a member of the healthcare team
- Increase association leadership
- Exceptional Practice
- Identify best practices/innovative practices in Illinois Pharmacy
- Patient safety initiatives
- Establish leadership development programs in practice
- High Performing Organization
- Improve volunteerism within ICHP
- Increase public relations
- Increase value-added services and products to the membership
- Create an ICHP Foundation
Finally, the plan contains specific tasks to accomplish the above
listed strategies using targets that are identified for each. To say
this was and continues to be an ambitious plan is to understate the
obvious. However, organizational success cannot be accomplished without
this type of framework.
Celebrating Successes!
The Retreat participants received reports that membership growth is
higher than ever before with more than 1700 members as of November 1,
2009 including 855 pharmacists (surpassing the target of 729) and 642
students (dramatically surpassing the 2007 target of 364)! The single
area of membership growth that did not meet target were pharmacy
technicians with only 162 and a target of 213. The ICHP Division of
Marketing Affairs and staff will continue to develop new methods to
recruit and more importantly retain members and grow the conversion
rate of student members to pharmacist members!
The ICHP Best
Practices Award is now a reality and has been for two years. The 2008
and 2009 awards were presented, and a regular column in KeePosted has
been established to highlight the brightest and best innovations in
Illinois Pharmacy Practice. In addition to a complimentary Annual
Meeting registration for the award winner, their pharmacy department
receives a monetary award to be used for department education and
development.
Some recent additions of value-added products and
services can be found on the recently redesigned ICHP Website. ICHP’s
Division of Professional Affairs has created a presentation that
pharmacist members may use when asked to promote a career in pharmacy
to local high school students. The presentation can be found on the
Member Resources and Toolkits page once the member has logged in. On
that same page, members may now review tools to help them incorporate
CPD (Continuing Professional Development) into their personal learning
processes. CPD helps the learner identify areas of weakness in their
practice knowledge and assists them in selecting appropriate continuing
education offerings to enhance their competency. Finally, the primer
“Disposal of Outdated and Unwanted Pharmaceuticals” has recently been
placed in this same section to help members get a better handle on this
growing problem.
As you can see we have made many strides to
accomplish our strategic plan! However, during the process we also
looked for areas where our goals have changed and the plan required
trimming.
Discarded what is no longer relevant!
The Retreat participants reviewed the current mission and vision of
ICHP and identified a few goals and strategies that were no longer
relevant. They were:
- Create an ICHP Foundation
- Establish an annual ICHP Pharmacy Leadership Conference
- Develop a 2 or 3 tiered leadership program (practice management, students, association leadership)
With the current economic environment and the existence of the ASHP
Leadership Conference held in Chicago annually, each of these
goals/strategies were found to be unnecessary and duplicative.
Goals and Strategies Modified!
Some of the goals and strategies were expanded or modified to reflect
the current practice and economic environments. In addition to initial
strategies for increasing membership of ICHP, a concerted effort will
be made to recruit those ASHP members who have yet to join ICHP. The
ICHP Division of Marketing Affairs will also launch its “ICHP
Champions” program in 2010 (see article in this issue) to improve
communications with members at each hospital and healthsystem. ICHP’s
New Practitioners Network will lead the charge into the implementation
of social networking media such as Facebook, Twitter and Linked In. The
Division of Government Affairs will expand direct-to-member
communications to share victories, sound alerts and train individual
members to be better personal lobbyists. Educational Affairs will
create more programming within the Annual and Spring Meetings that will
develop both pharmacy and organizational leaders while maintaining the
high standards of quality programming ICHP meetings have always
provided.
The ICHP Strategic Plan has been, is and will continue
to be a dynamic document that will guide the organization and the
profession through the future. It will soon be accessible on the
members only pages of the ICHP website www.ichpnet.org when all the
modifications identified at the 2009 Leadership Retreat have been
formally incorporated. Watch your e-mail for that important
announcement. Most importantly, respond to President Karpinski’s call
to become more engaged in the efforts of ICHP as we continue “Advancing
Excellence in the Practice of Pharmacy!”
The News Article appears in the following categories: