Trustee Toolkit

BOARD COMPOSITION AND SELECTION Sample Governance

Adapted from “Recruiting for a Diverse Health Care Board,” by Karma H. Bass (Trustee Insights, Dec. 2020).

Tools for the Root Cause Analysis (RCA) team, including a review a sentinel event, to understand why the event happened, and to decrease or eliminate a like event from occurring again.

There are better ways to honor and, as appropriate, continue to involve former trustees, while also adhering to the higher standards demanded of boards today.

As this grid suggests, good governance decision-making, when supported by a variety of board practices and tools, strengthens the board as a whole and its capacity to govern well.

Checklists A Trustee Checklist to Address Time Challenges As

The sample dashboards that follow provide examples for a multihospital system as well as a single community hospital.

An effective board chair/CEO relationship is essential to support governance excellence and begins with a clear understanding of individual and shared accountabilities. Dallas-based Methodist Health System defines these accountabilities in a board chair/CEO compact (shown below) that is used as both an orientation resource for new board chairs and a touchstone for ongoing evaluation of this critical relationship.

Doing your duty is not just about success; it is also about actively engaging in practices that promote good governance. Take this quiz to review and reflect on how your board compares with governance best practices.

To understand how the organization really functions on a day-to-day basis, boards need to gauge the hospital’s work life and its efficacy. Board responsibilities include: (a) understanding the hospital’s operating model and whether it actually performs in that mode, how critical decisions are made, and the hospital’s ability to recognize its own problems and “self-correct”; and (b) ensuring that it happens.