Issue link: https://beckershealthcare.uberflip.com/i/1186182
26 POPULATION HEALTH 26 CEO/STRATEGY Boards are tired of focusing on diversity, PwC finds By Emily Rappleye B oard members see the benefits of di- versity but are largely "ready to move onto other topics," according to PwC's 2019 Annual Corporate Directors Survey. Just 38 percent of the board directors surveyed said they felt gender diversity on boards was "very important," and 26 percent said racial and ethnic diversity was a top priority, both down from last year. Even fewer (14 percent) felt age diversity was "very important." Despite the decline in urgency around diver- sity initiatives, 87 percent of those surveyed agreed diversity improves board performance and 76 percent agreed that it improves com- pany performance. e results of the survey suggest directors may be tiring of shareholder pressure to diversify. is year marked a pronounced increase in board members who felt investors focused too much on board gender diversity (63 percent in 2019, compared to 35 percent in 2018) and too much on racial and ethnic diversity (58 per- cent compared to 33 percent). Even with recent progress, boards remain mostly male — 22.5 percent of board seats at Fortune 500 companies were held by women in 2018, according to a study conducted by Deloitte and the Alliance for Board Diversity. ey're also mostly white — 16.1 percent of Fortune 500 board directors were minorities in 2018. It is worth noting the respondents in PwC's survey mirror this ratio. PwC reported that 79 percent of the roughly 700 directors surveyed were male, and the majority were above 60 years old. PwC did not report on race and ethnicity. Those surveyed may also be ready to shift gears because they feel boards will diversify naturally over time (67 percent), or in some cases, because their idea of diverse enough is already near. More than half of respon- dents said optimal board representation for women sits at 40 percent or less. n Michigan hospital restructures board about a month after CEO's firing By Morgan Haefner S heridan (Mich.) Community Hospital reorganized its board and restructured its organization in October, roughly a month after the board fired the hospital's CEO. The executive board is being led by Jerry Rizqallah, an en- trepreneur and real estate investor, and Mark Clark, MD, president of Samaritan Health Care in Greenville, Mich. Samaritan Health Care recently took over patient services at Sheridan Community. The former board resigned after appointing the new executive board. Sheridan Community Hospital said its new board is "com- mitted to the vision of maintaining Sheridan Communi- ty Hospital's status as a critical access, rural community hospital." The new board is creating a separate adviso- ry board to uphold this vision, which will include local community members. The change comes a little over a month after the previous board fired CEO Randy Flechsig in late August. Bobbi Mc- Colley, Sheridan Community's HIPAA compliance officer, will continue to serve as interim CEO during the transition and will be a member of the advisory board. n Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center selects Dr. Claus Torp Jensen as first chief digital officer By Anuja Vaidya N ew York City-based Memorial Sloan Kettering Can- cer Center appointed Claus Torp Jensen, PhD, its first chief digital officer and head of technology. Dr. Jensen, who joined the system Oct. 14, most re- cently worked at CVS Health and Aetna, where he served as chief technology officer and head of archi- tecture, overseeing technology innovation, architec- ture planning and design, and digital integration. He previously served in technical leadership roles at IBM and Danske Bank. He holds 14 patents centered on integration, application programming interfaces and transformation, and earlier this year, he won an IDG CIO 100 Award. Dr. Jensen has a PhD in computer science from Aarhus Uni- versity in Denmark. In his new role he will oversee the integration of data and technology resources and direct the departments of infor- mation systems, health informatics and data products. n