Measuring Board Impact on Hospital Finance and Quality.

Boards are a powerful resource in overseeing our health system. This resource is limited in the amount of available time; therefore, boards should be as productive as possible. Boards should focus their energy on tangible, measurable results. Using natural language processing tools and quantitative outcome measures allows us to measure the impact of board focus. This analysis finds no significant relationship between a higher focus on finance or quality as measured by the board minutes and organizational performance in finance or quality. Boards focus much more on finance than quality or any other focus area with no substantive difference in outcomes. The study indicates that, at least in Ontario, boards may need to revise their approach and allocation of time to these topics.

Measuring Boards Using Quantitative Tools from Natural Language Processing.

Natural language processing (NLP) tools provide quantitative methods to analyze board minutes and better understand and measure the work of the board. Techniques such as riverbed graphs and sentiment analysis provide objective, measurable information about key areas (finance, quality, compliance) that boards focus their attention on. By comparing the key focus areas between different hospitals, this paper demonstrates that NLP tools can provide a robust and reproducible way in which boards can measure their progress toward the betterment of their goals, objectives and responsibilities for both peer-to-peer and internal comparisons.

Questions & answers: sustaining accountability.

As part of Ontario's ambitious health transformation agenda, 14 Local Health Integration Networks (LHINs) were created with the responsibility to plan, fund and integrate local healthcare services. As a result, LHINs are key stakeholders and play a critical role in the future of the province's Wait Time Information System (WTIS). As members of the WTIS project Steering Committee, these LHIN Leads share their thoughts and experiences in achieving accountability to make the WTIS a success.