Engaging Hospital Boards in Patient Safety and Quality of Care

Each day, accounts of safety-related incidents in hospitals appear in news reports across the country. The issues are wide-ranging, for example, worker burnout leading to staffing instability, overcrowded conditions in Emergency Departments, cyberattacks threatening the integrity of patient data, dismissals of whistleblowers, and medication errors. If we were to compile the headlines, such a list could be endless, occupying multitudes of volumes. The purpose of this chapter is not to chronicle quality and safety incidents, but rather to (1) examine the underlying forces that have an influence on the work of boards of directors in order to gain insight into how and why such errors, accidents, and even calamities can occur and (2) identify strategies and actions that boards can undertake in order to foster more robust and effective organizational cultures of safety and quality of care.