The Hospital Board Room

If you have been to one Board Room meeting, you have been to many.  

It is in this room, where the healthcare quality professional (i.e. Chief Nursing Officer, Chief Medical Officer/Vice President of Medical Affairs, Vice President of Performance Improvement, Director of Quality) must have a substantive presence and voice. 

Most importantly, this is the theatre where the Quality and Patient Safety agenda must rise and become the primary character, while the financial content plays the supporting cast.  Rather than a mere 5%-10% of the time, the Hospital Board should spend a minimum of 25% of all deliberations on Hospital Quality and Patient Safety related matters.

To this end, the healthcare quality professional should be capable of assisting the Board with three (3) essential vehicles:

• Establishing a Board Quality Committee (BQC) - and its agenda items.  
• Identifying appropriate patient stories that can be brought to the Board and shared, each month.
• Developing a strategically aligned organizational dashboard (no more than six indicators) with meaningful targets and definitions.

The cornerstone to Hospital Board oversight is not the financial statement, but rather patient care and the environment in which this care is delivered.

To learn further details, please go to www.ihi.org/IHI/Programs/Campaign/BoardsonBoard.htm

-soft of people, hard on processes