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This paper aims to examine the impact of a board-level governance bundle (i.e. size, independence, expertise, meetings, gender diversity and multiple directorships) on the non-financial performance of National Health Service (NHS) hospitals – and, separately, by hospital type (i.e. trusts hospitals and foundation trusts hospitals).

A logit regression for panel data is used for a sample of 128 NHS trusts and foundation trusts across England from 2014 to 2018. The data was hand-collected from NHS hospitals’ annual reports and Care Quality Commission reports. The cancer waiting time target (i.e. 62-day cancer referral and treatment target) is used to measure non-financial performance.

The main findings for NHS hospitals indicate that multiple directorships positively and significantly affect non-financial performance. However, board expertise and gender diversity have a negative and significant influence. When the sample is partitioned, the results remain the same for the NHS foundation trusts hospitals. For NHS trust hospitals, except for multiple directorships having a positive and significant effect, all remaining governance attributes have an insignificant impact.

The findings have implications for policymakers and practitioners as they move to implement measures to improve hospital performance against the cancer waiting time targets in the English NHS.

To the best of the authors’ knowledge, this is the first study to examine the impact of corporate governance on cancer waiting time targets in public hospitals. Overall, this paper contributes to the corporate governance literature, especially in the context of public hospitals, and has significant practical and theoretical implications.