Resource Library

Overall Roles and Responsibilities -The Governance Committee provides for the board’s effectiveness and continuing development.

AHA’s Center for Healthcare Governance would like to thank Sierra Vista Regional Health Center and its Board of Trustees for sharing this sample mentoring feedback form.

Deeply held beliefs can blind boards to the true nature of change. It’s time to challenge the orthodoxies. In the early 2000s, the Nokia board debated creating a smartphone. The company’s wireless handset was the global best seller. Management believed consumers would not use a touch screen on a handset.

The role of the board is to govern, not manage, the organization. To that end, the board carries out four roles.

Are You Prepared to Meet Today’s Governance Challenges? Serving on a community hospital or health care system board in today’s challenging environment takes more than the desire to fulfill a fiduciary duty.

In many ways, women are on the front line in health care — as consumers, employees and family caretakers. They possess firsthand knowledge of community health issues and needs. They can bring an informed perspective to health care and other community organizations about where to focus resources to have the greatest impact.

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.

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.

The complexities inherent in performance-based contracts call for increased board oversight

Healthcare executive support can influence the value these organizations provide.

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

Executive and board support is needed for physician leadership that lasts. Collaborative leadership with physicians will be essential for hospitals to successfully create and maintain agile organizations that can compete in the rapidly changing healthcare landscape.

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.

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

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...

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

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.

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

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.

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.