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Do boards really make a difference? What impact do governing boards have on hospitals? Do better boards have better hospitals? These are questions healthcare leaders are asking as governance processes become more complex and important. Governing boards are under greater scrutiny than ever before and are being held to higher levels of accountability. Much of this has been driven by the many well-publicized corporate failures that have reduced the public's trust. Thus, the relationship of board effectiveness to hospital performance is a critical topic for leaders in healthcare.
A research study was conducted to examine (1) the measures used to evaluate the performance of governing boards and (2) the relationship of board effectiveness to organizational performance. In this study, board performance was measured by the study participants' scores in six dimensions of board competencies identified in the Board Self-Assessment Questionnaire (BSAQ), a tested tool used in research in nonprofit organizations. The six dimensions are contextual, educational, interpersonal, analytical, political, and strategic. Previous research has shown that these factors are important in highperforming boards (Chait, Holland, and Taylor 1993). These six factors were the independent variables for this study, or the factors of board performance that influence organizational performance. This study incorporated the use of a selfassessment tool completed by hospital board members.
Hospital organizational performance was measured by analyzing how hospitals ranked in Solucient's 100 Top Hospitals(TM) program (Solucient 2004), a program recognized nationwide as a reliable measure of hospital performance. The primary dependent variable w ...