Hospital Safety: Board Involvement Improves Quality of Care
According to a recent study released by the Governance Institute and Solucient to Modern Healthcare, hospitals that engage the board of directors in quality oversight appears to distinguish top-performing hospitals. The study was based on a survey of 4,200 not-for-profit hospitals and health systems in the United States and was conducted by Solucient, "the market leader in providing the tools and vital insights that healthcare managers use to improve the performance of their organizations." Solucient's senior vice president, Jean Chenoweth, expressed surprise that less than half the boards at the hospitals surveyed had developed a formal statement on quality.
The five conclusions drawn from the study:
1) consistent high performance is associated with hospitals at which the CEO's performance evaluation includes how well clinical improvement goals were met;
2) the board participates in the development of physician credentialing criteria;
3) the board's quality committee annually reviews patient-satisfaction scores;
4) the board sets the agenda for its quality discussions; and
5) the medical staff also is involved in setting the board's agenda for quality discussions.
Solucient used the data from this study to combine with its 100 Top Hospitals Performance Leaders data. The 100 Top Hospitals listing, published annually, "uses a balanced scorecard approach, based on publicly available data, to identify 100 benchmark hospitals that have the fastest and most consistent organization-wide improvement over five consecutive years." The on line listing provides links to the winning hospital websites.