Several habits of highly successful hospitals

When a hospital's board of directors is involved in quality oversight, the hospital has a better quality of clinical care and stronger financial success, according to a study released by the Governance Institute and Solucient. The study, which examined 4,200 not-for-profit hospitals and health systems, determined that the best hospitals performed a number of quality measures on a regular basis.

Key quality measures included making sure CEOs evaluated whether improvement goals were met; having the board develop credentialing criteria for physicians and patient satisfaction scores; and having medical staff raise issues to be addressed in the board's quality discussions.

This underscores the importance of the board's involvement in creating a high-quality health system. It just makes sense: when quality issues are at the front of directors' minds, those issues are likely to get more attention.

- read the Modern Healthcare report