Resource Library

With the recent rounds of health insurance company merger and acquisition activity, many hospital executives and their boards may be wondering if a provider-owned plan might make sense for them.

Recently, I sat in a board meeting of a leading U.S. health system as trustees were discussing their strategic vision for the system, and how the rapidly changing health care field, marketplace and regulations were having a profound impact on its future.

For a hospital board to be effective, it must first be engaged. Specifically, board members must actively and productively participate in the work of governing. This is absolutely vital in today’s health care environment, which is full of volatility, uncertainty, complexity and ambiguity.

While most health care governing boards may still rely on paper packets and board agenda books for board and committee meetings, adoption of board portals— Web-based, online workspaces that support health care governance—appears to be catching up with use in other sectors.

More and more boards are adopting the practice of using competency-based criteria to select governing board members. They identify the subject areas and behavioral qualities needed from trustees and apply them to recruitment, orientation, leadership development, succession planning and periodic evaluation.

Board chairs are often chosen based on peer respect, professional knowledge, demonstrated commitment such as chairing a board committee, and willingness to put in the time required. A somewhat surprising finding to emerge from the AHA’s 2011 Governance Survey is that conflict management is an important yet seldom discussed role of the board chair.

Over the last decade, and especially since the Enron failure, boards of all types have been working to enhance their performance. They ensure their composition is competency-based; they align their structures with their strategies; and they have robust, written governance procedures.

Health systems and hospitals are becoming increasingly complex, expanding beyond the traditional hospital/parent company model to include new structures and strategic partnerships to support a wide range of care for patients in their communities.

Establishing well-organized and consistent governance processes and procedures enables the board to be most productive, and ensures that its time is allocated to the most critical topics.

As the drumbeat of attention to governance effectiveness intensifies, the evaluation of individual directors is off-limits no more. Indeed, the New York Stock Exchange, Business Roundtable and National Association of Corporate Directors all recommend that corporate boards institute individual director assessment.

The tools that follow lay out a framework to assist you in that thinking and planning process with a focus on the competencies of individual trustees.

The role of a health care organization trustee gets more complicated and more sophisticated every day. Pressures are increasing simultaneously for higher quality, lower cost, more transparency and accountability, and use of evolving and evermore expensive technology.

Telehealth connects patients to vital health care services though videoconferencing, remote monitoring, electronic consults and wireless communications.

How well boards govern is influenced by a number of factors, among them, the knowledge and skills board members bring to their work.

A Comparison of External Quality and Safety Scorecards

The following is intended to be an example that boards may adapt to meet their individual chief executive officer (CEO) evaluation needs.

For hospitals and health systems interoperability means applying this concept to the sharing of information in electronic health records (EHRs) and other health information through a fluid process that gives multiple providers in multiple locations actionable information to support safe and quality care and to engage patients in their own care.

New board members need more than a briefing on their organization — and the role they play in it

This primer provides an overview of the MACRA law and includes questions to help boards, executives and clinical leaders discuss its impact on their organization.

Hospital and health system boards and leadership can advance their understanding of population health and how population health management fits into organizational priorities by considering the following questions.