Resource Library

Governance responsibilities today are so significant that board members must bring more than commitment to the mission and interest in serving. As William Bowen writes, every trustee should bring a “specific competence or experience needed on the board.” This sample provides a board policy statement on competency-based recruitment, election and re-election of board members. Use it to customize a process for your board.

Boards can play a key role in guiding, supporting young health system leaders.

This checklist poses questions about whether your board is following recommended practices for strategic planning.

CEOs need to target and develop physicians to play leading roles in health care transformation. Perhaps the greatest challenge health care organizations face over the next decade is physician engagement. As integration and value-driven care continue to advance, physician leaders will be increasingly called upon to meet the demands of a changing landscape.

Boards and CEOs must constructively address the succession imperative. Succession planning for the CEO and other senior leadership positions is critical to organizational continuity and stability, especially in a transforming healthcare field.

CEO goal-setting and evaluation is a fundamental responsibility of a governing board. These questions are designed to help boards assess their CEO evaluation process and determine if any improvements are necessary.

The American Hospital Association (AHA) Board of Trustees, in 2015, created a task force to address these challenges and examine ways in which hospitals can help ensure access to health care services in vulnerable communities. The task force considered a number of integrated, comprehensive strategies to reform health care delivery and payment. Their report sets forth a menu of options from which communities may select based on their unique needs, support structures and preferences.

A three-stage framework can help boards to identify information technology priorities

Four areas of knowledge and skills must be mastered to make the move from fee for service.

When trustees are appointed to the board of Manatee Memorial Hospital, they have a steep learning curve as they settle into this new role. Providing an orientation program and performing frequent performance evaluations help to ensure that trustees receive the training, resources and ongoing support they need to serve the organization.

Healthcare executive support can influence the value these organizations provide.

This publication discusses observations and trends about system development and identifies models of governance that are emerging as new organizations form and determine what it really means to become a system. It also reviews issues and obstacles that can arise as models of governance change and suggests steps boards can take to address them on the path toward more effective system governance.

Incentive compensation plans are intended to focus executives’ attention on their organizations’ most vital priorities and initiatives. As health care organizations revise their business strategies to address the ongoing transformation of care delivery and payment, health care boards also need to reassess the structure and measures of performance in their executive incentive compensation plans.

This monograph offers guidance on proactively considering best practices in executive pay, including the changing role of incentive compensation, good governance practices to mitigate risk and choosing appropriate peer comparison data to support the compensation decision-making process.

Sound policy management can support the board’s risk and compliance oversight responsibilities

What if the typical hospital board meeting — multiple hours spent on endless pages of financial data, slide after slide of bullet points and little time left for meaningful discussion — could be more engaging and less time-consuming? With some planning and practice, boards and senior executives can make this happen.

In July 2011, five national health associations jointly urged hospital and health system leaders to take three steps to help eliminate health disparities and improve quality of care. These steps called for increasing...

This monograph will focus on the Board’s role in plugging into how these processes are carried out within their organizations and on how the Board role is evolving. Among other things, we will address the characteristics of relationships among health care organizations and physicians that, if nurtured and respected, will enable the challenges of tomorrow to be more easily surmounted.

In the new era of health care, hospital boards must consider a different kind of leadership style

In some boardrooms, the topic of education for trustees elicits yawns, groans or even downright resistance. This may explain why findings from the AHA’s Center for Healthcare Governance 2014 National Health Care Governance Survey indicate a decline in every type of board education since the last survey...