What This Phase Is For
Your strategy has not been tested yet. Phase 4 is where it gets tested — before the press conference does it for you. You will exchange canvas drafts with another team and receive a set of structured challenge questions. Your job is both to challenge the other team's strategy rigorously, and to strengthen your own strategy in response to the challenges you receive.
This phase is one of the most valuable in the simulation. Real healthcare leaders use stress testing — red teams, scenario analyses, and board scrutiny — to find the weak points in their strategies before they are exposed publicly. This is your version of that.
What Your Team Should Accomplish
- Read the other team's canvas draft carefully and identify its three most significant vulnerabilities.
- Write 3–4 specific, substantive challenge questions — not softballs.
- Receive the other team's challenges to your strategy and develop clear, specific responses.
- Revise and strengthen your own canvas based on what the stress test reveals.
- Identify any gaps or vague areas that will need sharper answers before the press conference.
Challenge Questions You Should Be Ready to Answer
- How does your model remain financially viable if value-based contracts take 3 years to yield savings?
- What happens to your strategy if the physician group refuses to participate?
- How do you reach the 27% of residents in medically underserved areas with this model?
- Who owns accountability when care coordination breaks down?
- What does success look like at Year 1? Year 3? Year 10?
- If the operating margin falls to 1.5% in Year 1, what gets cut and what stays?
- How do you reduce physician burnout while adding new care model requirements?
▶ Coach Note
If you can answer these questions clearly, specifically, and consistently across all six roles — you are ready for the press conference.
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Phase 4 Key Output
Refined canvas with responses to hard questions — and a clear picture of what still needs sharpening before the press conference