Designing Best Practices in Cardiovascular Service Line Governance

BHSF leadership sought to design a cardiovascular (CV) service line governance structure that would allow each region to continue functioning independently while also contributing to  the combined success of the institute. ECG’s approach led to the development of an institute charter with a clear vision, goals, and accountabilities, allowing BHSF to better plan for the future.

BHSF, an 11 hospital health system with over 150 outpatient and ambulatory locations, engaged ECG to issue an opinion on the best practices for governing a CV institute across multiple existing markets. BHSF leadership wanted to design a governance structure, outlined in a whitepaper, that would allow each region to continue to function independently and participate in the combined success of the institute.

ECG’s three-phase approach began with researching industry CV program best practices of healthcare organizations similar to BHSF (i.e., multiple markets) to compile examples of how CV service lines were being governed at national high-performing programs. We also interviewed BHSF executive team members to gain an understanding of the current situation and challenges the system faced.

For the second phase, we interviewed healthcare executives from existing ECG clients with strong CV service lines for insights on topics related to governance, performance tracking, and management responsibilities in their respective institutes. 

Finally, in phase three, we combined our research with the insights from the interviews into a whitepaper and summarized recommendations tailored to BHSF. ECG and BHSF representatives collaborated throughout the project via a focused executive work group.

In addition to publishing the whitepaper, ECG issued recommendations to BHSF based on three key dimensions of service line governance: 

• Designing a system-level governance framework (instead of separate governance of each market) 
• Clearly defining the needed leadership/management positions for a dyad leadership model, including a delineation of roles and responsibilities
• Developing a CV institute charter to clearly establish a vision, goals, and accountabilities for operating the institute

ECG shared these recommendations with BHSF leadership and refined them to ensure alignment with the organization’s goals. As a result of these recommendations, BHSF was able to better plan for future operations and enhance its CV institute leadership search with a more clearly defined vision.