Committees and Boards in Healthcare Organizations: Barriers to Organizational Learning?

12 Reflections ■ Volume 6, Number 4/5 reflections.solonline.org Are Healthcare Organizations LearningDisabled? In our work, my colleagues and I have found that the organizational dynamics in hospitals, medical groups, and other healthcare organizations tend to include an overemphasis on advocacy, power and control, personal agendas, blame, and other fear-based dynamics. Although it is true that these elements are seen in all industries, these dynamics seem to be the norm in healthcare organizations. Additionally, fear-based dynamics seem to manifest themselves more in healthcare teams, and especially at the board and committee levels, where managers and physicians interface. This severely limits an organization’s capacity to create, adapt, and innovate effectively – skills needed to meet current and future industry challenges related to cost, consumerism, patient safety, and outcomes based in quality. Health care organizations will need to evolve into true learning organizations if they are to survive these industry trends. Our review examines the challenges of creating a culture conducive to team learning at the level of hospital boards and committees, the nature of the team learning skills lacking in healthcare organizations, and the approach we took with one organization to replace its “governing board” with that of a structured dialogue group, in an effort to advance its efforts in becoming a learning organization while fostering closer relationships with physicians. Committees and Boards in Healthcare Organizations: Barriers to Organizational Learning?