Total quality management: A committee takes the reigns. The Governance Institute BoardRoom Press newsletter. April 2006.

Quality oversight in a hospital or health system is the responsibility of the board of directors. Whether the work happens in a committee or is done by the full board, it is as imperative to board effectiveness and organizational performance, if not more, than financial oversight. This article provides guidelines for committee structure, meeting agendas, and quality goals.

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Schyve PM. What you can do: The trustee, patient safety, and JCAHO. Trustee. 2003 Feb;56(2):19-21, 1.

The Joint Commission has developed patient safety standards that hospital leaders, including trustees, are responsible for implementing, along with National Safety Goals and recommendations.

Orlikoff JE. Building better boards in the new era of accountability. Frontiers of Health Services Management. 2005;21(3):3-12.

The author contends that health care chief executive officers and their boards must be willing to recognize the challenges and risks to the field of governance, in general, and to their boards, in particular. New strategies and approaches for successful governance include becoming compliant with Sarbanes-Oxley requirements; conducting a comprehensive audit of the structure, function, composition, and culture of the board; and seeking board members from outside the community.

Gautam KS. A call for board leadership on quality in hospitals. Quality Management in Health Care. 2005;14(1):18-30.

Who will provide leadership in hospitals? A natural choice is the board of trustees on account of its legal responsibility for quality and its authority over medical staff and administration. This article describes several barriers to board leadership on quality and suggests strategies by which boards can lead the campaign for quality.

Nolan T, Berwick DM. All-or-none measurement raises the bar on performance. Journal of the American Medical Association. Mar 2006;295(10):1168-1170.

All major quality measurement systems use science-based indicators of proper processes of care. In this article the authors describe three different measurement options — item-by-item, composite, and all-or-none measurement — then contend that the all-or-none approach offers distinct advantages for achieving optimal patient care.

Insight: A dialogue on quality and patient safety with Maureen Bisognano. Healthcare Quarterly. 2006;9(2):28-30.

A dinner for healthcare leaders at the 6th National Conference on Quality featured a conversation with Maureen Bisognano, Executive VP and COO of the Institute for Healthcare Improvement (IHI). The conversation was facilitated by G. Ross Baker, professor in the Department of Health Policy, Management and Evaluation at the University of Toronto.

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Nolan T, Bisognano M. Finding the balance between quality and cost. Healthcare Financial Management. Apr 2006;60(4):66-72.

What's the answer to improving the value if health care? One group believes hospitals could take a lesson from Japanese quality expert Noriaki Kano. At a time when consumer demand for value in health care — both in terms of quality and price — has never been higher, Kano could share important insights with hospital CFOs and clinicians alike.

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Nolan TW, Kabcenell A, Stevens JP, Martin LA. Large-scale system change improves outcomes: The Pursuing Perfection program. Journal of Clinical Outcomes Management. 2005;12(11):569-576.

This article describes the interim results of a the Pursuing Perfection program aimed at achieving unprecedented improvements in health care outcomes and to discuss the implications for other ambitious, organization-wide improvement efforts.

Gosfield AG, Reinertsen JL. The 100,000 Lives Campaign: Crystallizing standards of care for hospitals. Health Affairs. Nov-Dec 2005;24(6):1560-1570.

As a result of the 100,000 Lives Campaign, the authors posit that the six Campaign interventions ("planks") have become national standards of care and propose four theories of liability for hospitals that ignore the Campaign or fail to implement its planks. This article proposes that hospitals and their boards now face a legal incentive to reduce needless deaths through six specific interventions.

Bisognano M, Plsek P, Schummers D
Chicago, Illinois: Health Administration Press with the Institute for Healthcare Improvement; 2005

Authors Maureen Bisognano and Paul Plsek — both frontline figures in the improvement and innovation field — share concepts in enhancing care and service delivery that have been developed and successfully implemented in outpatient as well as inpatient settings of actual health care organizations. Topics include creativity and innovation, bundles, pattern mapping, Rapid Response Teams, medication reconciliation, flow, spreading improvements, and more. [This is the second book in a series.]