The Quagmire of Hospital Governance: Finding Mission in a Revised Licensure Model

Blum examines health care regulation from the perspective of institutional governance and grapples with the evolving and expanding role of the hospital board. He offers an overview of the amalgam of legal principles that have converged to create the de jure foundations of hospital governance. He then touches upon recent events that have triggered renewed interest in governance, including controversies over asset reallocation, concerns over the adequacy of non-profit hospital community benefits, and a new, expanded emphasis on hospital board oversight of clinical quality issues, including patient safety. Asserting that the licensure scheme provides a regulatory center of gravity from which to direct the hospital governance function, he argues for broad reform in this arena of legislative oversight.