Resource Library

The complexities inherent in performance-based contracts call for increased board oversight

Executive and board support is needed for physician leadership that lasts. Collaborative leadership with physicians will be essential for hospitals to successfully create and maintain agile organizations that can compete in the rapidly changing healthcare landscape.

A three-stage framework can help boards to identify information technology priorities

Four areas of knowledge and skills must be mastered to make the move from fee for service.

In July 2011, five national health associations jointly urged hospital and health system leaders to take three steps to help eliminate health disparities and improve quality of care. These steps called for increasing...

What if the typical hospital board meeting — multiple hours spent on endless pages of financial data, slide after slide of bullet points and little time left for meaningful discussion — could be more engaging and less time-consuming? With some planning and practice, boards and senior executives can make this happen.

Incentive compensation plans are intended to focus executives’ attention on their organizations’ most vital priorities and initiatives. As health care organizations revise their business strategies to address the ongoing transformation of care delivery and payment, health care boards also need to reassess the structure and measures of performance in their executive incentive compensation plans.

Healthcare executive support can influence the value these organizations provide.

Is participation in a super clinically integrated network (CIN) in your organization’s future? Here are some questions for health care organization boards and leadership to consider.

The evolving U.S. health care system will demand more standardization, reduced variation in outcomes and lower costs, necessitating new care delivery methods. A variety of models may emerge but physicians are the one constant to any emerging care paradigm, making hospital physician alignment imperative.

A new business model is emerging to transform the care delivery and payment systems. The transition is underway in many communities — moving health care delivery from emphasizing sick care to addressing population health management.

A hospital-physician network spanning multiple partners may be an ideal fit for a smaller system

Recruiting board members is a challenge for every hospital and health system, but the task is particularly difficult in small communities. At Benefits Health System, Great Falls, Mont., our pool of candidates is largely limited to the city’s 60,000 residents, despite the fact that we are the tertiary referral center for a population of 250,000 across nearly 40,000 square miles of rural Montana.

When someone walks into your hospital, his first impression is created by the physical architecture. But his lasting impression — and what he is most likely to talk about when he returns home — will be determined by what we call the “invisible architecture” of core values, organizational culture and behavioral expectations.

Executives, trustees and physicians should be the leading advocates of philanthropy.

The emerging health care environment has changed the game for health care organizations and for physician leadership. The turbulence of that environment is going to require what could be called “agile organizations” adept at matching leadership and decision-making styles and setting and executing strategies appropriate to the nature and depth of environmental change.

The traditional acute-care hospital is becoming just one of the entities within a larger system that probably includes primary and specialty care clinics, ambulatory care sites, behavioral health care and post-acute care. In addition, the systems may be employing physicians, developing robust philanthropic organizations, developing entrepreneurial businesses, conducting research and offering medical education.

The complexity around physician compensation demands defined, layered board oversight

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. Agendas should reflect the most important strategic issues and priorities, and make efficient use of trustees’ valuable and limited time; meetings should be designed to maximize trustees’ ability to engage in critical dialogue; and committees and task forces should be used to enable the board to focus time on high-level strategic discussion.

The U.S. health care system is quickly moving toward a care delivery model that encompasses entire populations, not just the patients who present themselves for care. This is because many at-risk individuals in the community seldom, if ever, seek treatment or health screenings—and they have a disproportionate impact on total health care spending.