We’ve published guides for growing your medical fitness facility. We introduced steps to grow your membership, took a deep dive into developing your brand internally and externally, and studied tactics to boost member retention. These growth strategies are designed to help secure the longevity of your facility.

Taking any of those steps to grow your facility is exciting, but not without unique challenges. In this final guide, we’ll unpack what might the most difficult task: convincing your leadership or hospital board to invest in your growth strategy.

So you’re up to bat, presenting to your board. What do you need to win them over?  Building an informative, thorough, and actionable business case is the best way to help get them on your side. But constructing that kind of presentation can be daunting. If you need a place to start, try using Club Automation’s straightforward yet effective road map. Known as a SAR (Situation, Assessment, and Recommendation), this business case template is the first step to successfully present your case to your leadership.

Below we’ll explain each section and how you can implement them into your business case.

This first section should introduce the crux of your presentation and summarize what the audience should expect. Being concise yet intriguing in these initial moments is the best way to grab their attention. Your leadership is extremely busy, and your presentation is probably one of several they are reviewing that day or week. To use a business term, this is your elevator pitch where you set up the needs at hand (i.e. opportunities for post-rehab health and wellness programs) and the problem you’re trying to solve.

The assessment is where you establish the framework of your plan and get into the nitty gritty details and proof points that are necessary for a compelling value proposition. Your leadership team will most likely consist of several members with diverse roles who will each be looking for a different measure of success in your plan (i.e. return on investment, ways that the medical fitness facility will attract members, and future impact on the hospital operations). Make sure you have points that address their individual concerns and the metrics that matter. For example, if you want to discuss how you plan to get non-patients to join, you can make the argument that marketing content should focus on preventative health and wellness strategies in addition to illness and rehabilitation. A specific use case come from Horizon Health. Operating a value-based care environment, Horizon Health set up their own fitness center called Elite Sport and Fitness to make sure their patients remained healthy even after hospital visits. Running a community fitness center is not a traditional path for a hospital, but one that aligned to Horizon’s mission while providing a new revenue stream.

This stage of the SAR process is your chance to bring home your points in a way that excites and motivates the leadership so that they will consider and hopefully vote to invest in your business case. Use specific timelines for implementation of your strategies as well as estimated figures for all proposed revenue streams. Present the board with how much the organization stands to gain from this strategy well as what opportunities they would miss out on if they passed on your proposal. The makeup of your leadership team will ultimately impact how your plan is received, but armed with a solidly constructed SAR, your chances for success are headed in the right direction.

Club Automation would like to provide you a detailed guide on creating a SAR, which also includes a sample use case. You can download the guide below.