Call it the Lake Wobegon effect after Minnesota’s very own Garrison Keillor, that fictional place where “all the women are strong, all the men are good looking, and all the children are above average.”

Only in this case, they’re not children: They are the chairmen of 722 nonprofit hospitals, and 99% of them think their hospitals fare at least as well as a typical hospital on standard quality measures, according to a survey published in Health Affairs. Even worse, 100% of the chairmen of hospitals that perform the worst think they are at least as good as a typical hospital. (“Only 1% of Hospitals Are Below Average,” Jacob Goldstein, WSJ Blogs, November 9, 2009)

It’s hard to know what’s most appalling about this ignorance:

• The chairmen don’t know how their hospitals perform on standard quality measures, information that is available to anyone on the Internet.

• The chairmen don’t know what “typical” performance is—also available on the Internet.

• No one has bothered to share this information with the people who bear some responsibility for their hospitals’ performance or, worse yet—

• The chairmen don’t care.

The Baldrige Criteria ask how you evaluate the performance of your board members. I would add questions about how the board reviews the hospital’s quality performance to that evaluation. The Criteria also ask how you use these performance reviews to develop and improve the board. Based on the survey, one easy way to improve your board is to tell it how your hospital performs on standard quality measures. While you’re at it, share data on patient and employee satisfaction and process improvements along with that heavy dose of financials.

Then the next time this survey is taken, hospital board chairmen may have a clue what they are talking about.

To read more about hospital performance, click on these articles:

• To Improve Hospital Care, Improve the Board
• Measuring Quality in Healthcare
• 3 Ingredients to Improving Healthcare
• A Healthcare Role Model
• Baldrige Saves Lives
• Why Baldrige? Saint Luke’s Makes the Case

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