Paper. You have reams of paper. Each month, you turn your reams of paper into hundreds of documents and assemble those documents into heavy binders.

You ship the binders off to your board of directors. They’re carried around for awhile. And finally they’re left to sit on a shelf forever. Sound familiar? This is likely the process your hospital’s administration team undergoes for every one of your board of directors meetings. And it’s repeated over and over, meeting after meeting.

In truth, it’s probably even worse than that. The information inevitably changes. What do you do? You reprint sections of those heavy binders. Then you call couriers to deliver them to all of your board members. You may repeat this once, twice, maybe three times. Finally, you’re off the hook for a few weeks. That is until the next board meeting, when you start it all over again.

It’s a familiar process that’s costly, time consuming and inconvenient. As healthcare organizations find ways to be more efficient and environmentally conscious, printing and reprinting board books sends the wrong message. There are better answers. Why not put the whole thing on those iPads you gave board members as a holiday gift, perhaps?

Yes, the answer is to go digital. It’s a simple change in many ways. You’re already assembling huge board books using digital files, so instead of printing the information, send it digitally to board members. Large files are tricky to email and even harder to email securely. Flash drives or CDs work, but still need to be delivered to board members.

A better solution is to share the information through a secure board extranet. Board members can simply log in from anywhere and retrieve the secured documents.

Here are three reasons you should implement a board extranet:

• Efficiency and cost-saving: Board extranets increase team efficiency and reduce monthly expenses. Plus you’ll use much less paper. You don’t have to spend time printing, collating, and binding your meeting documents. You’ll no longer have to pay for printing and delivery costs. It’s easier to distribute changes and updates too.
• Security: Ever wonder if your board member documents truly remain confidential? When you ship and transport important documents, you never really know whose hands they may fall into. To receive information through a board extranet, board members must use a secure login and password. And once they log in, they are able to access only the information for their corresponding committees. You’ll have peace of mind knowing your documents remain secure from you to your board.
• Collaboration: Board extranets provide a great vehicle to facilitate collaboration among board members, committees and taskforces. Members can upload agendas, meeting notes, educational materials, and other important information.