title: Hospital board power.
abstract: This paper is about governance of community not-for-profit hospitals. It begins by noting the marked inconsistencies between widely shared views of official hospital board functions and the actual performance of these boards. Several models of organisation power are then reviewed, with comment on their adequacy for hospitals. Then the notion of hospital board power as a convenient fiction is presented. The paper concludes with a discussion of the sufficiency of this arrangement for hospital performance.
mesh_terms: D003659:Decision Making, Organizational; D006075:Governing Board / Q000458:organization & administration*; D006761:Hospitals; D006764:Hospitals, Community / Q000458:organization & administration*; D006788:Hospitals, Voluntary / Q000458:organization & administration*; D008962:Models, Theoretical; D011209:Power, Psychological; D012380:Role; D014481:United States