Resource Library

Working committees are the engine that powers effective boards. As their responsibilities increase, boards depend on their committees to engage in careful analysis and oversight of the organizationʼs performance plus a thorough vetting of recommendations before they are submitted to the full board. When committees do their job well and make concise reports to the board, they free up time to use full board meetings for education and open discussion on important strategic and policy issues.

Effective board leadership transitions can be facilitated by institutionalizing basic tools and processes. These include setting term limits for those in board leadership positions, periodic evaluations based on clear job descriptions and assessment of potential barriers to successful CEO relationships.

As governing boards seek greater diversity in ethnicity, race, and gender, they face a significant challenge: how to successfully recruit women and minorities with pertinent professional backgrounds and governance skills, while other not-for-profits and corporations seek directors from the very same pool of candidates.

Many governing boards are frustrated because most board meetings and committee meeting agendas are so full of both important and routine business that little time is left over for interactive discussion and questions concerning highly significant or future-oriented strategy and policy issues.

Hospitals and health systems generally employ more physicians than executives. At the same time itʼs likely that the board of directors spends far more time on compensation issues in the C-suite than on physician compensation and its associated regulatory and business risks.

This is the second in a series of collaborative leadership tools for CEOs. The first one presented a new model of collaborative leadership.This one focuses on clarifying trustees’ and CEOs’ expectations of each other. It includes a simple exercise for helping trustees and CEOs refine the way they work together.

Governing boards traditionally call executive sessions from time to time to discuss confidential, proprietary or personnel related matters in closed session. In recent years, however, the increasing emphasis on board independence and vigilance has triggered a new use for executive sessions.

Health care governance has entered a new era of heightened accountability, scrutiny and reform. This era imposes significant new burdens and challenges on boards and has raised the bar on what is required and expected of them. As a result, many boards are shifting their focus away from strategic leadership toward becoming compliant custodians.

Asset stewardship has long been a key board responsibility. As fiduciaries of a health care organization’s assets, governing boards are required to act in the best interest of the organization, ensuring that resources are used in a reasonable, appropriate and legally accountable way to meet community health care needs.

Today, slightly more than 50 percent of the nation’s hospitals identify themselves as being part of a health care system. Systems come in all shapes and sizes. Some are large and comprise many hospitals across a wide region, including, among others, nursing homes, physician groups and insurance companies

Collaborative Leadership: A New Model For Developing Truly Effective Relationships Between CEOs and Trustees is the first in a series of tools developed specifically for you, the hospital or health system CEO, to help you take the lead in dealing with this change in ways that will stabilize and strengthen relationships with your board.

Spotty attendance at board and committee meetings used to be little more than a chronic nuisance, but with governance standards rising, boards are getting more serious about attendance. When a third or more of board seats are vacant or a few members are habitually absent, how can the board be fully informed, raise tough questions and reach independent conclusions as a group?

The current challenges of healthcare governance have given rise to a growing debate about the issue of term limits for hospital and health organization board members. Are term limits a restrictive practice that leads to the loss of badly needed board talent, or are they an essential way of keeping boards from becoming stale and ineffective?

Note:The following is intended to be an example that boards should adapt to meet their individual needs.

Board self-assessment is widely recognized as a fundamental building block of continuous governance improvement. For the past 20 years, many healthcare organization governing boards have engaged in full board performance evaluations, often on an annual basis. These evaluations are designed to assess the board’s knowledge of its roles and responsibilities and how well the board as a whole is discharging them.

The following is intended to be an example that boards should adapt to meet their individual needs.

From a Community Multi-Site Hospital with a Diverse Community Note: the following is intended to be an example that boards should adapt to meet their individual needs.  To read more...

All state statutory and case law holds that directors of nonprofit, 501(c)(3), corporations must serve as stakeholder (owner) agents, acting in ways that protect and advance their interests. Legalities aside, this is the foundation of great governance. In order to fulfill this obligation, directors must discharge three legal fiduciary duties: loyalty, care and obedience.