ASSESSING THE STATE OF HEALTH CARE GOVERNANCE

Since the recent highly publicized scandals occurring in public companies and nonprofit organizations alike, several initiatives have been launched to identify and remove the underlying causes of these failures. Many of these initiatives focus on raising the bar on board performance and accountability.

Perhaps best-known at the federal level is the Sarbanes-Oxley Act. Several state statutes and other federal regulatory and private sector reforms have adopted many of the Act’s provisions and offer more detailed guidance on how to comply. Other efforts have been launched to help boards understand how to go beyond competent stewardship to achieve truly outstanding performance. One such effort convened a blue ribbon panel of experts in nonprofit governance.

The panel’s report, The Source12: Twelve Principles of Governance That Power Exceptional Boards (Board-Source, 2005), identified and described a set of principles that distinguish exceptional boards. Publications such as these attempt to move beyond legislative and regulatory prescriptions to empower boards on their own journeys toward governance excellence.

To build upon these efforts and provide specific guidance for health care boards, The Health Research & Educational Trust (HRET), an affiliate of the American Hospital Association, with funding from Russell Reynolds Associates and the Center for Healthcare Governance (CHG), convened their own Blue Ribbon Panel (as quoted) in November 2005.

The panel, which included chief executives and trustees of hospitals and health care systems, governance researchers, consultants and others with expertise in leadership and governance, was formed to examine the critical issues facing health care boards and identify practices that lead to exceptional governance.

The Blue Ribbon Panel began its year long deliberations by considering several important questions that need to be answered to facilitate health care governance transformation.

The Center for Healthcare Governance is pleased to provide all AHA and Center members with the second in a series of Collaborative Leadership Tools.

This complementary tool, developed in collaboration with Clark Consulting -- Healthcare Group, includes a simple exercise for helping CEOs work with the board to establish and communicate mutual expectations.

"Clarifying Expectations: A First Step in Developing Truly Effective Relationships Between CEOs and Trustees" focuses on clarifying trustees' and CEOs' expectations of each other and includes an exercise for helping trustees and CEOs refine the way they work together. This tool seeks to help CEOs work with the board to establish and communicate mutual expectations.

Collaborative Leadership Tool Overview:
Click here to download this collaborative leadership tool and read about how CEOs and boards can set mutual expectations for working together and how to use the exercise contained in the tool to get started.