Resource Library

Even before the Enron scandal, which featured directors who didn’t understand the company’s complex financial transactions, and before the Sarbanes‐Oxley Act required publicly owned corporations to disclose whether their boards include directors with financial expertise, it should have been self‐evident that relevant knowledge and experience are prerequisites for effective governance.  

The trustees of one health system were divided over how to structure the board. Some favored proportional representation from its acute care, nursing home and elder services divisions; others wanted all at-large members with no interests to promote. The CEO of another health system had restructured so facility executives were directly accountable to corporate management for finances and operations. He wanted local boards to focus on strategic direction and oversight of quality, but local boards continued monthly monitoring of finances as they’d always done. Some trustees wondered what their role was.

In industries where safety is critical and quality must come first, such as airlines and nuclear power, “red rules” refer to protocols that must be followed “to the letter” – all work stops until they are. A commercial airliner doesnʼt leave the gate if the pilot spies a possible leak or flat tire; a nuclear plant operator or even a Toyota assembly line worker can “stop the line” when he spots a critical flaw.

The governance challenges raised in the post-Enron environment are motivating many boards and their general counsels to draft new board policies and tighten up existing ones.

Great organizations have great leadership— at the top and throughout their ranks. 

Increasing diversity in health care leadership and eliminating care disparities are critical to ensuring high-quality care for all. The renamed Institute for Diversity and Health Equity has created a new model for the American Hospital Association’s (AHA) continued work on these issues and is engaging broader participation.

Board and Committee Composition and Succession Planning...

A critical need exists to elevate the discussion about workforce planning and development to ensure it becomes a standing, rather than crisis-driven, component of comprehensive strategic planning for hospitals and health systems.

The AHA’s 2017 report documents how leading health care organizations and their boards, in collaboration with other community partners, are beginning to expand efforts to addressthe myriad of social determinants that significantly affect the health of their communities.

Every day, health systems, hospitals and post-acute care (PAC) providers – such as longterm care hospitals, inpatient rehabilitation facilities, skilled nursing facilities and home health agencies – confront the daunting task of complying with a growing number of federal regulations.

The Triple Aim of improving the experience of care, improving the health of populationsand reducing per capita costs of health care is a nationally recognized goal that provides context for much of the work now underway to redesign existing systems for care, payment and collaboration to achieve better health outcomes for all Americans.

Because of this generation’s size and increasing influence, Millennials are being surveyed and studied to better understand what makes them tick and how they may play a role in fundamentally reshaping how we live, work—and govern—our organizations.

While most organizations conduct annual board self-assessments, it seems that few boards actually use the results of those assessments to develop specific plans for improvement. According to PriceWaterhouseCooper’s 2017 Annual Corporate Directors Survey, board members’ dissatisfaction with their fellow trustees has reached an all-time high.

Download the 2018-2023 report. In the new environment, leaders must stay abreast of the trends highlighted in Futurescan to successfully move ahead on the long road toward value-based healthcare.

As health care field changes become more complex, savvy board and executive leaders are intentionally increasing the time that their boards spend in robust discussions of strategic challenges and opportunities.

This diagnostic is designed to help boards and organization leaders identify challenges that may be impeding efforts to improve quality. Developed by Jim Conway, this resource draws on 20 years of personal governance experience as well as learning from the literature and the shared experience of trustees, executives, patients, family members, staff, teachers, and students.

As strategic planning becomes a more intense focus for hospital boards, lessons from publicly traded companies may be instructive.

As medical costs consume an ever increasing share of businesses’ profits, self-funded employers and public purchasers of health insurance are becoming more aggressive than ever before in direct contracting with providers.

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.