Resource Library

With the recent rounds of health insurance company merger and acquisition activity, many hospital executives and their boards may be wondering if a provider-owned plan might make sense for them.

A board member/trustee with a nursing background brings a unique voice to governance conversations focused on the Triple Aim. Nurses bring expertise in and valuable perspectives about community health, quality, safety, patient experience, workforce development, staff engagement and financial stewardship.

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.

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

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.

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.

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.

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.

Several events can lead to a decision to down-size a board. In some cases, the trigger is a merger or an acquisition in which seating all legacy directors would result in a large, unwieldy board or produce an imbalance favoring one of the combining parties. In other cases, a large board simply decides its present size is an impediment to efficient and effective governance.

Whether a board’s starting point is average performance or mediocrity, the journey to the top echelon of governance effectiveness cannot be achieved with a few quick steps. Board development is more like a marathon than a sprint.

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.

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.

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.

Guided by their organization’s mission, vision and values, trustees must govern with their eye on the future, the well-being of patients, and the health of their communities.

Traditional community-based boards in health systems and hospitals have long been the stalwart of health care governance because of their value in connecting health care organizations to the communities they serve.

As community leaders, trustees are a powerful voice for their hospitals or health systems when it comes to advocacy. They can offer legislators “real life” insights and perspectives into the challenges facing patients and community members in the hospital’s service area, as well as how legislation and regulation will affect the women and men who work every day to fulfill their hospitals promise of help, hope and healing.

How well boards govern is influenced by a number of factors, among them, the knowledge and skills board members bring to their work.