The last two decades have seen unprecedented levels of change in Canada’s health care sector, resulting in mergers, alliances and various internal reorganizations intended to achieve higher levels of efficiency or resolve particular problems, such as recruitment difficulties. Implementation of these types of organizational transformations, which often involve many internal and external stakeholders groups are resulting in major challenges for the boards of health care organizations. In this article, we draw on a literature review of best practices in health care governance, lessons learned from one of our case studies, and the findings of a snapshot survey of hospital board members in order to examine the role of art and science in health care governance in the context of transformation.
