Effective board governance is the key to supercharging quality and safety across the health system

Tom Bates, Amy A. Ross, Gerald B. Hickson and Ling Zheng
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Tom Bates: Keck Medicine of USC, USA
Amy A. Ross: University of Southern California Health System Board, USA
Gerald B. Hickson: Center for Patient and Professional Advocacy (CPPA), USA
Ling Zheng: Keck Medical Center of USC, USA

Management in Healthcare: A Peer-Reviewed Journal, 2025, vol. 10, issue 1, 6-19

Abstract: Governing boards are key to effectively supporting quality and safety in health systems. A health system’s governing body is ultimately responsible for the quality and safety of care provided in an organisation.1–3 As healthcare systems grow, board governance at the system level, especially as it concerns quality and safety, needs to be routinely evaluated for effectiveness and continuous alignment with the organisation’s values. Boards should be committed to structural innovations and adaptability to ensure they are continually fulfilling their mission of quality and safety oversight on behalf of the patients they serve. In 2019, Keck Medicine of USC created a new health system board governance model. While the process for establishing the new model was relatively straightforward, identifying, implementing and ensuring effective health system governance is a journey of continuous improvement. The new model has resulted in a prioritised ‘voice of the patient’, board members who are dedicated to continuously improving quality and safety, identification of essential processes to oversee key dimensions of quality and safety, creation and effective use of a quality and safety dashboard to drive plans of correction, support for everincreasing performance improvement, discovery and management of internal and external challenges, removal of barriers to effective board governance, promotion of board member alignment and commitment, and routine and deliberative evaluation of board governance effectiveness and the need for ongoing education. This article is also included in The Business & Management Collection which can be accessed at https://hstalks.com/business/.

Keywords: board governance; quality; governance; systems thinking; culture of quality and safety; quality dashboard; education; professionalism (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: I1 I10 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2025
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