Healthcare strategy tends to be a “black box” affair, shrouded in mystery by consulting firms or in foggy recollection from a long-ago college text. Dawn Carter believes it doesn’t have to be that way. Based on more than 30 years’ experience as a healthcare strategist, she has written a straightforward, consistently practical handbook for practitioners of every kind: seasoned executives, emerging leaders, board members, and students alike.

That book is Strategic Planning for Healthcare: How to Implement a LIVING Strategy. Rather than abstract theory or academic jargon, it is a step-by-step guide for anyone who wants to understand how a winning strategy evolves and how it creates positive change. Filled with anecdotes from real-world engagements, the book also introduces Great Health System, a hypothetical organization whose strategy takes shape across every chapter, tying the entire process together.

The LIVING framework – built around six essential elements of strategy formation and execution – gives practitioners at every level a shared language and a clear path forward. At the same time, the book is focused on why-to as much as how-to. Carter's conviction is that strategy isn't a chore or a compliance exercise. Done right, it is the beating heart that keeps healthcare organizations moving forward in an increasingly difficult environment.

With fresh analogies in every chapter drawn from art, history, engineering, and beyond, LIVING Strategy makes the unfamiliar immediately recognizable and keeps the pages turning.

For readers who enjoyed If Disney Ran Your Hospital or Hardwiring Excellence, this is the book on healthcare strategy that you’ve been waiting for.

Dawn Carter is the founder and senior partner of Ascendient Healthcare Advisors, an Inc. 5000 boutique consulting firm serving regional health systems across the country. With more than 35 years of experience in healthcare strategy, planning, and market research, she has had the privilege of helping health system leaders navigate difficult strategic decisions on behalf of the communities they serve.

Dawn developed the LIVING Strategy framework over the course of those many engagements, observing the choices and conditions that determined whether a strategic plan was likely to succeed or fail. Her conviction that strategy should be a living discipline, not a periodic document, is the foundation of both her practice and this book.

She has taught strategic planning at the graduate and undergraduate levels as an adjunct faculty member in the Department of Health Policy and Management at the UNC Gillings School of Global Public Health. She holds a Master of Healthcare Administration from UNC Chapel Hill.

Dawn built her career and her firm on a belief both her parents instilled in her early: that you can do anything you want to do, and you can be anything you want to be. She lives in Chapel Hill, North Carolina, with her son, Dylan, and her dog, Bruni.

Robert Jones

A communications consultant with deep expertise in healthcare and nonprofits, Robert Jones has advised Ascendient for more than a decade. He previously co-authored Principles of Association Management with the late Henry Ernstthal.