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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.

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

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?

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

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

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

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.

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

Purpose: The hospital is committed to ensuring that it achieves standards of excellence in the quality of its governance and has adopted this policy describing the duties and expectations of directors. Application: This policy applies to all elected and ex-officio directors and is provided to directors before they are recruited for appointment to the board. Each director must confirm in writing that he or she will abide by this policy.

A key governance design challenge in healthcare systems having multiple boards with parent-subsidiary relationships is specifying the most effective/efficient subdivision and coordination of responsibilities and roles among them. The questions that must be addressed are:

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...

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.

Purpose: To ensure that members of the board have a common understanding of the role of governance, the board has adopted this Statement of the Roles and Responsibilities of the Board.

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