Quality Oversight

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…
How well boards govern is influenced by a number of factors, among them, the knowledge and skills board members bring to their work.
The number of public quality scorecards for hospitals has increased exponentially in recent years as consumers take more interest in getting the most value for their health care dollar.
Voluntary accreditation is considered to be an important symbol of a hospital’s commitment to high-quality, safe care. Some consumers look for accreditation when choosing a hospital. Many health care professionals believe it is an important indicator of the commitment to quality and safety they are…
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.
Although scorecards that measure health system performance against established metrics have become an increasingly common and useful tool in the trustee’s governance toolbox, finding concrete, comprehensive ways to measure how well the organization is achieving its strategic goals — and, in turn,…
In the publication, authors Joshi and Horak state that hospital trustees support hospitals’ fundamental missions to improve the health of the community. In a climate of growing concerns about the quality of health care and the amount we pay for it, trustees are called upon to oversee the…
Hospital and health system boards are being overwhelmed by hundreds of quality indicators from numerous sources. Many are required or linked to payment incentives, but some are part of voluntary improvement programs. Amidst the deluge of numbers, leaders could miss valuable, potentially actionable…
There’s hardly a health care board member, past or present, who hasn’t heard of the age-old governance mantra “no margin, no mission.” For years this simple phrase captured what most trustees came to believe was their primary obligation: to ensure the financial viability of their hospital or health…