Photo caption: Christine Bates, Board Chair at Thunder Bay Regional Health Sciences Centre, has been a volunteer on the Board of Directors for five years.
A dedicated group of community volunteers at Thunder Bay Regional Health Sciences Centre (TBRHSC) are working to ensure the Hospital continues to meet the evolving needs of patients across Northwestern Ontario.
TBRHSC’s Board consists of volunteers who bring a wide range of professional expertise and lived experience to their role. As a skills-based Board, they provide strategic oversight, shape the Hospital's long-term direction and ensure decisions reflect the needs of the communities TBRHSC serves.
For Board Chair Christine Bates, volunteering was a natural next chapter after retirement. Before joining, she intentionally gained experience on other community boards, recognizing the complexity and responsibility of hospital governance.
"This is a sophisticated board," she explains. "Every member brings a specific set of skills."
That intentional approach to recruitment based on specific competencies is one of the Board's greatest strengths. Directors are selected to create a balance of expertise, including finance, law, human resources, patient safety and quality, equity, diversity and inclusion, Indigenous and Francophone perspectives, and regional representation. As board members complete their terms, recruitment efforts focus on filling vacancies with skills and experience to better reflect the communities the Hospital serves.
"We're always asking ourselves, 'Who is missing from the table?'" Bates says. "The more diverse our perspectives, the better our decisions."
Serving patients from across Northwestern Ontario means board members need to understand the unique realities of rural, remote and Indigenous communities, where access to care often looks very different than it does in urban centres.
"It's hard to imagine governance from a distance," Bates says. "How could people sitting hundreds of kilometres away fully understand what access to care means for someone living in Sioux Lookout or on the North Shore? Some of our board and committee members live in those communities. They experience those challenges firsthand, and that perspective matters."
Much of the Board’s work happens through committees focused on governance, finance, human resources, audit, and patient safety and quality. Each of these committees includes an elected Community member who, together with Board members, examine issues in depth before recommendations come forward to the full Board for discussion and decision-making.
"Our governance role is often described as 'fingers out, noses in,'" Bates explains. "To work effectively, we ask questions. We provide oversight. But we don't manage the day-to-day operations."
One of the Board's primary responsibilities is developing the Hospital's strategic plan. Through extensive consultation with patients and families, staff, physicians, researchers, community partners and government leaders, the Board identifies emerging health care trends and determines where the Hospital should focus its efforts over the next several years.
"It's about asking, 'What’s next?'" Bates says. "We gather information about where health care is headed, and then we ask what we need to do now to prepare."
Progress is monitored through measurable goals and performance indicators that allow the Board to track results while remaining accountable to the community. Bates is particularly proud of the advancements made with two areas where the Board has supported bold organizational leadership.
The first is the Hospital's commitment to equity, diversity and inclusion. The Equity, Diversity, and Inclusion Framework aims to dismantle systemic and structural discrimination in health care and is embedded into all levels and supported by the Board.
"The amount of work that's been done, and how quickly staff embraced it, has been remarkable," she says.
She also points to the Hospital's innovative approaches to health human resources.
While many hospitals turned to agency nurses during province-wide staffing shortages, TBRHSC chose a different path.
Through creative recruitment, retention and workforce planning strategies, the organization avoided relying on agency nursing while continuing to strengthen its permanent workforce.
"It took tremendous creativity and foresight," Bates says. "It's something our entire organization should be proud of."
Although governance focuses on strategy rather than daily operations, board members are continually reminded of the impact those decisions have on patients.
"People stop us to tell us about the nurses, the support staff, the housekeeping staff, the people who made an incredibly difficult experience a little easier," Bates says.
Those experiences reinforce why volunteer governance matters.
Ultimately, the Board's goal is simple. "Everything we do comes back to making Northwestern Ontario healthier," Bates says. "We want people to receive the care they need, when they need it, as close to home as possible."