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Scenario Planning

What is scenario planning, and why is it important?

Scenario planning helps teams prepare for unexpected obstacles and opportunities and to stay focused on their primary goals and objectives as they work within complex and ever-changing healthcare and community environments.  

Scenario planning also helps teams anticipate future implementation challenges and opportunities that they might otherwise overlook and create action plans to address them.  This helps them to avoid being caught off guard and gives them a critical head-start when unexpected obstacles or opportunities arise.

When should I conduct scenario planning?

Conduct scenario planning after designing—and before implementing— care delivery transformation and payment mechanisms. The estimated time to complete scenario planning is 3-4 hours which can be spread over multiple meetings. See the Scenario Planning Facilitator Guide for details.

How should I conduct scenario planning?

Review the Scenario Planning Facilitator Guide below. It walks facilitators through each step of helping a team conduct an in-person or virtual scenario planning exercise.

Scenario Planning Facilitator Guide

Make sure to review the Scenario Planning Facilitator Guide in its entirety before leading your team through the exercise.

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Questions to Help You Determine if Scenario Planning is Necessary

The questions in this resource should be completed with your team. It will help you decide if conducting or updating a scenario planning exercise would be beneficial.

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About the Roadmap Goal and Objective Setting Tool

Use the Roadmap Goal and Objective Setting tool to facilitate and document the development, implementation, and evaluation phases of your health equity initiative. It will help your team realize your vision to reduce and eliminate health and healthcare inequities by providing a centralized resource to

  1. establish process goals that align with each Roadmap component; 
  2. document task status, identify project champions, and maintain detailed notes;
  3. monitor progress across multiple Roadmap components simultaneously; and
  4. promote consistent team communication, accountability, and progress.