Client profile: Large, Southeast health system with a parent board for the system and tertiary care hospital, and subsidiary boards for rural hospitals, a foundation, and for-profit enterprises
Project type: Comprehensive governance assessment and enhancement
Challenge: Help a new CEO and a visionary, committed board to take a fresh look at governance structure and practices to ensure the board is following nationally recommended governance practices and is exercising effective strategic leadership and fiduciary oversight.
Our solutions and results: Bader & Associates and ACCORD Limited teamed on this project. We reviewed a full range of board policies and documents, interviewed every corporate director and key leaders in management and subsidiaries, and brought our findings and recommendations to several meetings with the Governance Committee and full board. Some recommendations involved a shift from the traditional culture but the consultants helped educate directors about rising external governance standards and helped craft pragmatic solutions.
As a result, the board adopted stronger policies to demonstrate board independence, clarified the parent board's reserved powers over the foundation and other subsidiaries, strengthened its oversight of quality and patient safety, and initiated a process to enhance board-medical staff communications.
Client profile: A respected but financially challenged home health and hospice organization that included one of only two inpatient hospices in the state
Project type: Board self assessment and development retreat leading to a strategic planning process
Challenge: Initially, to help the board assess and improve its effectiveness, and subsequently, to help the board and management make critical decisions about the organization's future
Bader & Associatess solutions and results: Bader & Associates was engaged to conduct a board retreat to educate directors in good governance practices and adopt a board development plan to address improvement opportunities. We met with the Governance Committee, reviewed background documents, and designed and administered a self assessment questionnaire. During candid discussion at the retreat that hadn't occurred at regular board meetings, it became clear the board was gridlocked over questions of its strategic future and lacked a means of addressing them. As part of preparing a Board Development Plan, we helped directors organize a board-led strategic planning process.
At our recommendation, DGA Partners was engaged to conduct leadership interviews, analyze key financial and market data, and develop a strategic and financial analysis of four future scenarios. DGA Partners then facilitated a second board retreat to examine the options, choose a desired scenario, and prepare to engage in discussions with a desired strategic partner to develop a new facility.