St. Michael’s Hospital Case Analysis

St. Michael’s Hospital Case Analysis

St. Michael’s Hospital (SMH) is a Catholic hospital located in downtown Toronto, which is founded by the Sisters of St. Joseph in 1892. Till now, SMH still has tight connection with the Sisters and follows the Catholic traditions. The Health Services Restructuring Commission (HSRC) is a governmental organization that makes decisions on restructuring Ontario’s public hospitals as well as make recommendations to the Minister of Health of how to enhance health system. In 1997, HSRC negotiated with the Metropolitan Toronto District Health Council and decided to merge SMH and the Wellesley Center Hospital (WCH) in order to preserve only one downtown hospital east of Yonge Street in Toronto. The restructuring plan proposed to set up two entities after the merger: SMH and the Sherbourne Health Centre (SHC), which WCH will be eliminated. The issues arise during the setup of the new board of these two corporations.

The vital issue is that SMH is struggling to select board members from Wellesley and the board chair, Dan Sullivan, also wants to make clear what the roles of the boards are.

Primarily, the newly added boards must fit the missions and values of both SMH and WCH. These two hospitals serve distinct missions because of their backgrounds. SMH aims to treat those sick and poor patients with respect, compassion and dignity because of its Catholic foundation while WCH has a strong affiliation with the gay/lesbian/bisexual (GLB) community. Even though they have different values and reputation, there is still some similarities in these two hospitals. Both of the hospitals serve the sick and poor people in inner city of Toronto and are good at treating urban health problems. Thus, the SMH board should only select the nominees who can be tolerate to Catholic culture and GLB culture at the same time and have background or experience in a health institution. It requires SMH board to apply intensive interviews which consist of critical questions about how the person plan to do after joining the board and their attitude towards the newly merged hospital. This process is essential because the board is designed to assist the corporation to evaluate its overall performance and determine the strategy of the corporation. Unless the board members do care about the interest of shareholders and performance of the company, otherwise they should be eliminated or not be elected. The SMH board also can set up group interviews of 3 to 4 people and watch how they behave answering a same question about the future of hospital. The people who have the clear value and plan could be selected as a board.

Subsequently, SMH should fit the selected boards in a trust environment at the leadership level. The initial thing is to make sure the Sisters trust them and would approve their board position. Then it is also necessary to make sure the management team,

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