Building better boards in the new era of accountability

Healthcare boards are entering a new era of heightened accountability, scrutiny, and reform. Sarbanes-Oxley legislation, Internal Revenue Service scrutiny, pressure from creditors and bond insurers, activist state attorneys general, media attention, and other forces have sharply increased awareness of the importance of governance and have also raised the bar on what is required of boards and what is considered best-practice governance performance. Yet good governance cannot be legislated. The structure, composition, and specific required functions of boards can be legislated or mandated, but the effective function of boards cannot. At the same time that governance faces this new era of accountability, it is also being bombarded with the legions of monumental challenges in the tumultuous healthcare field. 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. Furthermore, they must be willing to implement new strategies and approaches for successful governance, including 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, among many others.