Essay Undergraduate 1,652 words

Carolinas Healthcare System: Strategy and Structure

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Abstract

This paper examines the organizational and strategic framework of Carolinas Healthcare System (CHS), one of the largest non-profit healthcare networks in the southeastern United States. It covers the organization's governing structure, mission, vision, and core values, and evaluates how its balanced scorecard strategic planning model aligns with those values. The paper profiles key executive leaders and their roles, describes CHS's divisional organizational structure across more than 900 locations, and analyzes Kotter's Eight-Step Change Model as the organization's change management approach. It concludes with an assessment of board governance, strategic goal formation, and the organization's primary service delivery and value chain activities.

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What makes this paper effective

  • It grounds abstract management frameworks — balanced scorecard, Kotter's change model — in the specific operational context of a real healthcare organization, making theory concrete and applicable.
  • The leadership roster section provides granular role descriptions that illustrate how a large, divisional healthcare system distributes executive responsibility across functional areas.
  • The paper maintains a clear thread between organizational values and strategic choices, explicitly connecting physician well-being initiatives to the organization's stated employee-centered values.

Key academic technique demonstrated

The paper demonstrates applied framework analysis: it selects established management models (BSC, Kotter's Eight Steps) and evaluates how a named organization implements them, citing both primary organizational sources and peer-reviewed literature to validate claims. This blend of institutional documentation and academic citation is characteristic of strong healthcare management writing.

Structure breakdown

The paper opens with an organizational overview, then moves logically through governance, mission/values, strategic planning, structure, leadership, change management, and governance impact — mirroring the standard sequence of a healthcare management case analysis. Each section builds context for the next, culminating in service delivery and value chain discussion that ties operational scope back to the strategic goals introduced earlier.

Overview of Carolinas Healthcare System

The healthcare organization this paper focuses on is Carolinas Healthcare System (CHS). It is one of the top healthcare organizations in the Southeast region and one of the most wide-ranging non-profit healthcare organizations in the United States.

The governing structure of Carolinas Healthcare System is led by the Board of Commissioners — a group of individuals who have demonstrated awareness and interest in the health and well-being of the public. In addition, the organization has a Board of Advisors whose members are selected by the Chairman of the Board (Carolinas Healthcare System, 2016).

Mission, Vision, and Core Values

Carolinas Healthcare System's mission is the formation of an all-encompassing system to provide comprehensive healthcare-associated services, in addition to educational and research opportunities, for the benefit of its consumers. The organization's vision is to be nationally acknowledged as a leader in transforming the delivery of healthcare and the quality and value of services it provides. Its core values recognize employees as a valuable asset; the four guiding values are caring, commitment, integrity, and teamwork. The organization maintains a Code of Business Conduct that delineates the personal and professional behaviors expected of both suppliers and workers, and it also serves as a quick reference for several of its compliance policies (Carolinas Healthcare System, 2016).

The strategic framework adopted by Carolinas Healthcare System centers on ensuring the welfare of its physicians. This priority has emerged largely because recent periods have seen multiple instances of physician fatigue and stress within the organization.

CHS uses the balanced scorecard (BSC) as its strategic planning model. The BSC consists of significant indicators tied to the operational and strategic objectives set by the organization each year. It aids in assessing and monitoring the progress made toward attaining those objectives. Importantly, it distributes objectives across four balanced perspectives: customer, employee and learning, internal business processes, and financial (Kaplan and Norton, 2007).

There is a clear relationship between the strategic plan and the mission, vision, and values of the organization. By prioritizing the well-being of physicians, the strategic plan aligns directly with the organizational values that recognize employees as a critical asset.

Strategic Planning Model and Framework

Organizations are designed in distinctive ways to achieve different objectives, and their structures can either facilitate or restrict that process. The organizational structure of Carolinas Healthcare System is a divisional structure, which is typically employed in large corporations operating across a wide geographic region. CHS has operations in more than 900 healthcare locations across South Carolina, North Carolina, and Georgia (Carolinas Healthcare System, 2016).

The following are the key leaders of Carolinas Healthcare System and their respective roles:

1. Eugene A. Woods — President and Chief Executive Officer (CEO)
Woods serves as the overall leader of Carolinas Healthcare System, providing leadership to more than 60,000 workers and overseeing all locations of the organization. As President and CEO, his responsibility is to provide strategic leadership by working with the Board and other management members to advance long-standing aims, strategies, plans, and policies (Garloch, 2016).

2. Paul S. Franz — Executive Vice President of the Regional Group
Franz directs the strategic development and operating activities of the organization's regional facilities.

4 Locked Sections · 1,060 words remaining
30% of this paper shown

Organizational Structure and Key Leaders · 520 words

"Divisional structure and seventeen executive leader profiles"

Change Management Model · 230 words

"Kotter's Eight-Step Change Model explained"

Board Governance and Strategic Goal Formation · 180 words

"Board oversight, policy-making, and goal-setting roles"

Service Delivery and Value Chain Activities · 130 words

"Hospitals, clinical trials, and marketing channels"

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Key Concepts in This Paper
Balanced Scorecard Divisional Structure Kotter's Eight Steps Board of Commissioners Physician Welfare Strategic Framework Change Management Value Chain Non-Profit Healthcare Corporate Governance
Cite This Paper
PaperDue. (2026). Carolinas Healthcare System: Strategy and Structure. PaperDue. https://paperdue.com/study-guide/carolinas-healthcare-system-strategy-structure-2161830

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