Research highlights: ? Organizational leadership is important to data-sharing efforts across hospital organizations. ? We developed and tested a reliable measure for quality improvement (QI) Leadership. ? This measure was associated with successful participation in data-sharing collaboratives. ? Such measures can contribute to the development of data-sharing readiness metrics.Abstract: Objective: The development of readiness metrics for organizational participation in health information exchange is critical for monitoring progress toward, and achievement of, successful inter-organizational collaboration. In preparation for the development of a tool to measure readiness for data-sharing, we tested whether organizational capacities known to be related to readiness were associated wit….