The CMIO—A New Leader for Health Systems
- Affiliations of the authors: Sentillion, Inc. (JL), Andover, MA; Thundermist Health Center (JL), West Warwick, RI; Five Rights Consulting, Inc. (RK), San Diego, CA; Health Plan Systems (MM), Woodbridge, NJ
- Correspondence and reprints: Dr. Jonathan Leviss, Sentillion, Inc., 40 Shattuck Road, Andover, MA 01810; e-mail: <jonathan.leviss{at}sentillion.com>
- Received 7 March 2006
- Accepted 2 June 2006
Abstract
Physician leadership is a critical success factor for health information technology initiatives, but best practices for structuring the role and skills required for such leadership remain undefined. The authors conducted structured interviews with five physician information technology leaders, or Chief Medical Information Officers (CMIOs), at health systems that broadly used health information technology. The study aimed to identify the individual skills and organizational structure necessary for a CMIO to be effective. The interviews found that the CMIOs had significant management experience prior to serving as a CMIO and were positioned and supported within each health system similar to other executive leaders; only one of the five CMIOs had formal informatics training. A review of the findings advocates for the CMIO to have a strong background and role as a physician executive supported by knowledge in informatics, as opposed to being a highly trained informaticist with secondary management expertise or support.
Footnotes
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During part of her time working on this study, Ms. Mohaideen was supported with compensation as a consultant to Sentillion, Inc.
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↵i Additional statistics include the following:
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Information technology projects average 43% in cost overruns
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Information technology projects average 82% in time overruns
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48% of required features and functions never appear in the released information technology system
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↵ii All five CMIOs were from hospitals that had successfully implemented CPOE, which for the purposes of this article has been defined as one hundred percent physician use of a clinical information system for at least one complete category of orders in a clinical care setting—e.g., all laboratory test orders on a service. Information about the CPOE implementations was either reported by a 3rd party, such as published report, or was directly communicated by the subjects to the authors.
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↵iii By the time of publication of this article, Dr. Brill had left the position to become the Vice President and Chief Medical Officer at Dearborn Advisors, LLC.
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↵iv At the time of the interview, Dr. Luxenberg had left the position to become Physician Informaticist at the Department of Clinical Research Informatics at the National Institutes of Health, Clinical Center, Bethesda, Maryland.
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↵v By the time of publication of this article, Dr. MacGregor had left his position at Shriners International Hospitals for Children to work solely as a Physician Executive for the Cerner Corporation.
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↵vi The examples in parentheses illustrate the approaches of individual CMIO interviewees.
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↵vii The training was provided through a National Library of Medicine (NLM) supported Medical Informatics Fellowship.
