FEATURE
board back reports that will keep their interest,” she adds. To keep meetings focused and avoid
wasting the board members’ time, Dol- sen says it’s worth addressing just one or two topics at each meeting. “That grad- ual drop of information is better in my estimation for physicians to hear,” she says. “I’ve learned that with board mem- bers that you don’t share too much, too fast since it’s often new territory for them and many are not big regulatory readers.” The way you provide this gradual education must be effective, says Rob- inson. “I tell board members a standard and break it down on what needs to be done to meet it,” she says. “If it’s a big project, such as the new quality stan- dards that came out recently, I break it down so that they can see the steps we need to take, but I also make sure not to make it too detailed because I risk losing them. I break it down enough to where I tell them these are requirements, get them to understand the steps, tell them this is a standard from a regulatory agen- cy, and, then, I get their buy-in. I have to get their buy-in because if I don’t, some things are not likely to succeed.” To help secure the board’s buy-in, Robinson says that she always explains to the board how the standard affects them and how it affects the ASC. “I try to put it into the language they under- stand, which is dollars, time, efficiency . . . so they understand what will hap- pen if we have to implement a process to comply with a rule, the importance of doing it and the regulations as to why we have to do it.” Dolsen says she carefully plans how she introduces a new regulation to the board and tries to do that at the most ap- propriate time. “I don’t find I do as well with the board by sitting down and just going through pages of rules and saying this is what we have to do,” she says. “I do it when the rule comes up. Let’s say I need to get approval to bring on an infection control nurse. I wouldn’t jump right into talking about the infection
control nurse. I would first deal with the definition and, then, I would deal with the nurse’s responsibilities. I tell the board that they have to pay for her train- ing and any other requirements, and I will refer back to the standard and tell them the reason we’re doing this is for Medicare and this is why it applies. But I do all this in stages. “It’s like a marketing ploy,” she con- tinues. “If you can’t get your message out in a brief, short span, succinctly and to their point, then you’ve lost them. That’s why I do it over time, in multiple sessions, and still keep it succinct.”
Preparation Sets Groundwork for Success
Since most board meetings last only a few hours but usually have many items on their agenda, you need to find ways to make the best use of the time you have with the board, says Robinson. Fortu- nately, you can take steps in advance to help maximize these precious minutes. Robinson says that she works with her medical director, who serves as chairman of the board as well, to com- municate with the board members on any new issues leading up to the ASC’s quarterly meeting. “I would say that rarely would some-
thing brand new that they haven’t heard before come up during a board meet- ing,” she says. “There are times I meet with them to talk; there are times that if something comes up I will email them information on something we’ll discuss in the next meeting. It makes it so much smoother and easier to be able to accom- plish whatever we need to accomplish because they may have heard about those issues a couple of times before we actu- ally have our board meeting.” “If it’s something that needs a board
decision,” Robinson continues, “it’s that much easier for them to understand and comprehend because they’ve heard it before rather than hearing it for the first time in that meeting, and now we need their vote in five minutes.”
Jones advises providing the board with a short outline of their duties and responsibilities for the upcoming meet- ing. “This way they can think about how they can be mentally prepared when they come to a board meeting,” she says. “And if you end up using that outline as part of your template for your board agenda, I think that’s helpful too.” She adds, “If you can also give them
information prior to a board meeting on some of the statistics you will present to them—some of the graphs or trend re- ports you will present to them—they have more time to use their scientific reasoning to provide better input on what they would like to see happen in their ASC.” As they prepare for a board meeting,
Jones says, ASC staff also need to make sure that the issues to be covered dur- ing the meetings and documented in the minutes are not just financial in nature. Surgery centers must make sure that a significant portion of time spent dur- ing these meetings focuses on patient safety, facility safety, employee safety and oversight.
“Sometimes the minutes I see are
very focused on financial results,” Jones says. “That’s important to know and un- derstand, but that can’t be your whole minutes and that should not be your whole board meeting.”
Jones also notes that it is important for administrators to make sure that if the governing board forms committees and delegates particular responsibilities, the governing board needs to take action on those committee reports and recommen- dations. Some medical staff bylaws allow one committee and some specify several committees. If the governing board and medical staff leadership are the same, which is often the situation in smaller sur- gery centers, and the medical staff bylaws do not require separate committees, you can have one meeting and one set of min- utes that take care of all the responsibili- ties for oversight by the medical staff and governing board, she says.
ASC FOCUS JANUARY 2013 23
Page 1 |
Page 2 |
Page 3 |
Page 4 |
Page 5 |
Page 6 |
Page 7 |
Page 8 |
Page 9 |
Page 10 |
Page 11 |
Page 12 |
Page 13 |
Page 14 |
Page 15 |
Page 16 |
Page 17 |
Page 18 |
Page 19 |
Page 20 |
Page 21 |
Page 22 |
Page 23 |
Page 24 |
Page 25 |
Page 26 |
Page 27 |
Page 28 |
Page 29 |
Page 30 |
Page 31 |
Page 32 |
Page 33 |
Page 34 |
Page 35 |
Page 36 |
Page 37 |
Page 38