Customer Stories
Billings Clinic-Logan Health
Montana’s largest health care system utilizes OnBoard for the multitude of boards and hospitals that serve its communities.
Customer Stories
Montana’s largest health care system utilizes OnBoard for the multitude of boards and hospitals that serve its communities.
Industries: Health care; nonprofits
Headquarters: Billings, Montana and Kalispell, Montana
Board Management Goals
Results
OnBoard Capabilities Utilized
Billings Clinic and Logan Health are united as one nonprofit, Montana-based, independent health care system focused on keeping patients and families close to home and connecting care in communities throughout the region. The unified health system serves an area that includes Montana, northern Wyoming, and the western Dakotas and is governed by a board of community members and medical professionals.
It encompasses 25 hospitals, which includes 16 regional partnerships with critical access hospitals and clinics. More than 9,000 employees, including 1,200 physicians and advanced practice providers practicing in 80 specialties work together to provide patients and their families with a positive, proactive, patient-centered experience through innovative and effective approaches to high quality, safe health care.
The health care system has deep commitments to complex care, local access, innovation and health care education. By uniting the two organizations, each of which have served Montana and the surrounding region for more than 100 years, Billings Clinic and Logan Health are better together and better positioned to adapt to the rapidly changing health care environment, with a commitment to sustaining and growing services to meet the needs of Montana and Wyoming families.
In a relatively sparsely populated area, there’s not always a guarantee that residents will be able to get the health care they need locally. Billings Clinic – Logan Health aims to alleviate that.
“We want people to receive treatment close to home because we believe that’s important to people,” says William Gibson, Billings Clinic – Logan Health’s Chief Legal Officer. “We often hear of people having to travel to Denver or Seattle or Salt Lake City or Chicago for care, and that’s a real hardship for families. That differentiates us from some of the larger health systems in the country. Our approach involves some complexity but creates opportunity. We have boards at each of our hospitals operating somewhat independently.”
Each hospital has its own board of directors, along with a board that governs the overall system, and two foundation boards as well. William estimates Billings Clinic – Logan Health has more than 100 board members that use OnBoard.
“We want health care decisions to be made locally,” he says. “They’re not simply advisory boards; they’re making decisions for their hospitals. There are of course requirements in the bylaws about certain decisions that require system approval, but it does make governance a bit more complicated for us.”
Each board within Billings Clinic – Logan Health’s system included 10 to 15 members, and the system board includes 10 members — two CEOs, a Logan Health physician, a Billings Clinic physician, and six volunteer community members. The foundation boards average around 20 members each.
The boards typically meet under a hybrid format, although the hospital boards are more likely to meet in-person. They don’t operate under universal term limits — “board recruitment is difficult in the smaller communities,” William says — but the larger hospitals limit members to three 3-year terms.
All this can make system-wide governance challenging. It was even more chaotic before Billings Clinic – Logan Health pivoted to a board portal. They used email and printed packets for board communications prior to OnBoard
“Trying to manage that number of boards is difficult,” William says. “We needed a solution that would enable those of us at the system level to have insight into what was going on at the local level without sending reams of paper or emails back and forth. Putting everything in one place was important. We wanted to eliminate paper and enable board members to access materials.”
— William Gibson, Chief Legal Officer, Billings Clinic-Logan Health
Billings Clinic – Logan Health selected OnBoard after doing some research. With such a large network of boards, implementation among the individual hospital boards is ongoing, but the board that oversees the entire system was seamless.
“We were able to get the system board implementation fairly quickly,” William says. “The implementation specialist helped us with training materials and walked through what we would need. There was quick adoption by the system board, and I think it was very positively received. From there, we started rolling the product out to other hospitals.”
William admitted there was some resistance to change. “There was a desire to stick with the way we’ve always done things,” he admits. “Turnover was also an issue for us. But whenever we had turnover, OnBoard was able to train and retrain and provide materials. The help and patience from the OnBoard team has been critical.”
In addition to OnBoard’s support, Billings Clinic – Logan Health took a few of its own steps to make the change-resistant directors more comfortable with the transition.
“For anybody who did not have a tablet, we purchased tablets for their use, and that became their OnBoard device,” William says. “People sat with them and walked them through how to use the software. Most of them are now using OnBoard pretty regularly. Some of them still request printed materials, but I think that personal attention is what lifted the resistance.”
When new board members join, William says training them on the platform isn’t a problem. “Most of the new board members have been fairly tech-savvy, and OnBoard is a very intuitive platform for them,” he says. “If you just introduce it to them, get them their login information, most of them understand how to use it before they even show up for training.”
William says Logan Health frequently utilizes the Voting and Approvals and D&O Questionnaires, through which they document conflict-of-interest checks and the skills matrix. He appreciates the ability to quickly access documents from past — and in some cases, current — board meetings.
“As the Chief Legal Officer, I’m often asked questions during a meeting about what is it that we approved or what action do we need to take. Often, I have to reference back to previous meetings and the minutes to those meetings. It’s much more efficient for me to click my mouse a few times than to feverishly flip through notebooks.”
As for other board members, William says the consensus seems to be that they most enjoy being able to quickly access board materials “wherever they are, whenever they can.” He cited as one specific example of a board member whose schedule demands that he travel globally frequently. That makes in-person meeting appearances rare and intensifies the need for a cloud-based portal that enables him to access board materials no matter where he might be.
“It helps them be more prepared for board meetings,” William says succinctly. “It’s difficult to lug around a big notebook full of information.”
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