As the complexity of leading health care organizations grows, boards must continually scan environmental trends and assess their implications. While the issues affecting hospitals are wide-ranging, boards can play an important role in helping identify the key issues likely to have the greatest impact on their organizations and ensure that strategies to address them become priorities.

"Trends and Strategic Planning: Implications for the Board," a Trustee Workbook appearing in the November/December issue of Trustee magazine, helps trustees understand critical demographic, consumer, physician, payer and market forces shaping the health care environment and provides tips and tools to help boards address them.

This workbook offers a current look at issues such as disparities in care delivery among different populations, the impact of chronic disease and ability to pay on Americans and their hospitals, the impact of information technology on care delivery, and performance reporting and reimbursement, as well as the affect these and other changes are having on hospital/physician relationships.

The workbook discusses the implications that these trends will have on hospitals and includes several tips for how boards can help their organizations strategically address them. It also includes a readiness assessment that can help boards and executives identify how responsive their hospitals are to environmental change.

Center members can access the article via the Center Web site beginning November 1.

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Fall Symposium on Governing & Leading Healthcare Organizations
September 13-16, 2009
White Sulphur Springs,
West Virginia

More information on events

The Center for Healthcare Governance wants members to be as connected as possible to our governance consultants. Being able to ask questions online and receive responses back quickly will ensure you'll find the answers and resources to help you achieve excellence in health care governance.

Please fill out the Center's Ask the Governance Expert online form with your specific question or request, and you will be contacted within 24 hours with a reply. In addition, please feel free to use this form to submit feedback about the Center's services so that we can better serve you.

Please note that this is a member-only resource. Only submissions by Center members will be answered.

The Center for Healthcare Governance developed Speakers Express to help make the high-caliber speakers and presenters found at its national symposia and regional workshops available to organizations throughout the country. Our speakers are proven professionals who are viewed as the "go-to" leaders in their respective fields of expertise, customizing their presentations to fit the unique needs of each organization.

The Center for Healthcare Governance introduces Larry Walker, who served for six years as Chairman of the Board of Trustees of 107-bed Mt. Hood Medical Center and has also been a trustee of Portland, Oregon's Legacy Health System and two of its predecessor organization's Healthlink and Metropolitan Hospitals. Learn more about Larry Walker below:

Larry Walker Speaker Bio Presentation Topics

More Information on the Center's Speakers Express

To view archived editions of the Center's bi-weekly email Center News & Updates, click here.