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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.

Here are some of the questions that we as governance consultants hear most frequently about board committees.

In most professions, there are clear and relatively consistent pathways along one’s career continuum, as well as clearly defined experiential and educational requirements. Not so with health care governance staffing, which ranges from board support provided by a CEO’s assistant all the way to a comprehensive governance support staff led by a senior vice president/chief governance officer.

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.

Throughout my years of serving on boards, I typically have done so as an outside trustee, someone who brings knowledge about health care issues in general and about governance in particular, to the board table. Boards composed primarily of community members, as hospital boards traditionally have been, often incorporate outside trustees within their membership to bring a fresh, external perspective into board discussions.

Scorecards aren’t going away: consumers want help distinguishing one hospital from another, and these reports offer the promise of synthesizing complex information for worried patients.

The heart of your organization should be reflected in your mission and vision statements.

By Mary K. Totten and Pamela R. Knecht In today’s health care environment, the need for collaboration has perhaps never been stronger, with hospitals and health systems pursuing partnerships in a number of ways, including alliances, networks, affiliations and, at times, full mergers and acquisitions. In both the for-profit and nonprofit sectors, one form of collaboration — joint ventures — has long been viewed as a sound strategy for achieving multiple objectives.

Some 66 percent of U.S. hospitals are now part of health systems, according to 2016 survey data from the American Hospital Association. As systems continue to grow in scope and complexity, their governance often follows suit.

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

The inspiring “Bridging Worlds” roadmap is just one of many resources SHSMD offers its members in healthcare planning, marketing, communications, physician relations, and business development.

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