Challenges for Healthcare Leadership Boards

For decades healthcare has been a complicated and highly controlled enterprise. Up until 2013, senior executives and the boards that supervise them could count on a sector that was stable and predictable.

But that all changed with advent of an unprecedented shift in reimbursement and changes in the quality and safety of patients, which are reshaping how healthcare organizations function to remain competitive. These changes have created new challenges for healthcare leadership boards.

Opinion leaders we interviewed in the process of this research identified three kinds of healthcare board behaviours they believed to be particularly crucial:

A strong board should insist that the right information is made available. It should emphasize the importance of safety and quality goals and give trustees realistic targets. This involves using measures endorsed by the National Quality Forum and developing an effective benchmarking strategy that can identify and comprehend the top performers. The aim is to empower trustees so that they can challenge every hospital to improve quality and eliminate mistakes.

The board healthcare leadership boards of directors should also seek the help of trustees with expertise in the science of safety and quality (e.g. high reliability, Six Sigma) to serve as chairmen and members of the quality committee of the board. Ideally, these people could be drawn from other industries like nuclear power or aviation. This will ensure that the board has a specialist in place to assist the chief executive officer and other staff members in establishing and achieving appropriate targets and ensuring that the healthcare leadership team is doing everything it can to enhance performance.