Challenges for Healthcare Leadership Boards
Healthcare has been a complex highly regulated, highly controlled industry for decades. Up to 2013, it was possible for the top executives and the boards who oversee them to count on an industry of relative stability and predictability.
But that changed with the abrupt change in reimbursement, as well as changes to patient safety and quality standards, which are reshaping how healthcare organizations operate to stay competitive. These shifts have created new challenges for healthcare boards.
The opinion leaders we talked to in the process of this research identified three kinds of healthcare board behavior that they believed to be particularly important:
A strong board must insist that the correct information is available. It must stress the importance of safety and quality goals and give trustees meaningful targets. This involves using National Quality Forum-endorsed measures and creating a robust benchmarking plan that identifies top performers and is aware of the processes they employ. The aim is to empower trustees to challenge every hospital and system to improve quality and reduce medical errors.
The board should also solicit the help of trustees who are experts in the science of quality and safety (e.g. high reliability, Six Sigma) to serve on and chair the board’s quality committee. They should be from other industries like nuclear power or aviation. This will ensure the board is staffed with a specialist to guide and assist the CEO and other employees in establishing and achieving the correct goals, and that the healthcare leadership is doing everything it can to improve the performance.