Effective practices in healthcare governance
Governing boards play an important role in Canada’s healthcare system. They are accountable for the strategic direction and overall performance of the organizations they govern. As a result, the decisions and actions of governing boards can have a significant impact on the system at large.
Two of the four stories address the impact of making quality of care and patient safety a top priority for the board. The second pair of stories explores how boards successfully engaged members of the community in a dialogue about the future of the organization.
Story 1
Eastern Health learns that creating a new culture starts and ends with the Board
In 2005, when Joan Dawe was appointed to chair the Board of Trustees for Eastern Health, she took the helm of a new $1.2-billion health authority created from the merger of seven separate organizations within Newfoundland and Labrador. Like most of the boards Dawe had chaired since 1975, finance dominated their corporate agendas. However, Dawe saw a need for the board to move patient safety and quality of care to the top of its priority list.
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Story 2
Patient safety tops the agenda at the Winnipeg Regional Health Authority
Patient safety is not just the flavour of the month at the Winnipeg Regional Health Authority. It is the No. 1 item on the WRHA board’s agenda – and it usually has a human face. The Quality, Patient Safety, and Innovation Committee reviews actual cases of patients who have died because of an adverse event.
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Story 3
Capital District Health Authority uses ‘inconvenient truths’ to transform healthcare
Prior to 2006, the Board of Directors of Nova Scotia’s Capital District Health Authority was doing what it thought a board should be doing: controlling and managing financial risk for the organization it governed. However, it was also aware that the organization’s financial outlay was rapidly becoming unsustainable.
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Story 4
Consulting the experts: How Vancouver Island Health Authority engaged communities in strategic planning
Based on feedback from a process of community consultation, VIHA went back to the drawing board and re-drafted its strategic plan after Board members realized that – even more important than seeking community involvement – the organization needed to build credibility by acting upon what it heard from residents.
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