On the same page
At Trustee, we strive to provide practical tools you, as a board member, can use to better understand and respond to the many changes happening in health care today.
One of our key goals is to enrich the conversations that trustees have among themselves and with their senior management team. We understand that many trustees are not health care professionals, and we want to report on complex — and sometimes wonky or arcane — issues in a way that is valuable to everyone involved in the planning and decision-making process, whatever their level of expertise.
Many of the topics we cover in this magazine we also cover in our sister publication, Hospitals & Health Networks. After all, the challenges coming out of health care’s transformation are the same whatever your role in hospital leadership. But while the articles can be similar, they often contain subtle differences; the Trustee version will address specific governance issues, while the H&HN version will be written with the C-suite in mind.
On the other hand, some articles are identical in both publications. Take the 2017 American Hospital Association Environmental Scan, beginning on Page 13, which ran in H&HN in September. It examines the big trends that health care providers can expect in the next year or so. Under each category, bulleted paragraphs explain why these trends matter and provide interesting facts that leadership teams — trustees and top managers — should know.
The purpose of the AHA Environmental Scan is to inform discussions leading up to and encompassing strategic planning. It’s pithy and easy to digest, and it will help trustees and executives get on the same page going into those conversations. There’s also a resource list on the last page of the AHA Environmental Scan to aid board committees assigned to dig deeper into a specific area.
In some of our other articles, we include Trustee Talking Points that call out the primary points of whatever topic is being addressed and Trustee Takeaways that provide action items for board members going forward.