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THE REAL WORLD OF RELATIONSHIP COMPLEXITY
Still, as one CMIO interviewed by Healthcare Informatics noted, “When it comes down to it, my being in the IT department has strengthened my ability to get things done; and I also have budgetary responsibility and staff.” That CMIO reports dually to the CMO and CIO in his organization. And that kind of arrangement, Shaffer told Healthcare Informatics in an exclusive interview, is really the way things are moving for many CMIOs these days.
As Shaffer explained it, “There are new changes in our recommendations around reporting relationships. On the one hand, it's been true for a while that CMIOs, if you ask them to whom they should report, they will say the CMO. But more and more are acknowledging that the reporting relationship must be a hybrid between the CMO and CIO. The CMIO is very intertwined with and interdependent on the CIO; it must be a non-competitive co-creation, as they say at the Harvard Business Review.”
Shaffer also noted that “There must be a matrix relationship; and the chemistry between the CMIO and CIO is very important. Our old prediction” with regard to recommending where the CMIO should report “was towards the CMO; this is our new one-this is the advanced CMIOs and advanced CIOs recognizing this” with regard to a matrix or dual reporting relationship to the CMO and CIO, she said.
MOVING AWAY FROM THE ‘GEEKY DOC SYNDROME’
CMIOs attending the symposium agreed that the CMIO role is maturing. John Lee, M.D., who is one of three lead medical informaticists at Edward Hospital & Health Services, an integrated health system in the Chicago suburb of Naperville, Ill., told HCI that “CMIOs' role continues to expand in terms of the usability of the systems, in harvesting value for the EHR; and evolving role in data analytics, in IT governance, and in the use of business analytics, but also in the connectedness between the capabilities of the EHR and CPOE and documentation and clinical decision support; and analytics.”
And Bobbie Byrne, M.D., Edward's CIO and a pediatrician by specialty, said, “I think we're at this point where there are still CMIOs who are the classic ‘geeky hospital docs’; but that situation is changing, and there now are some really strategic CMIOs who are really helping to plan things.”
Given that she herself is a physician, how would Byrne advise non-physician CIOs about how to help their CMIOs be successful? “For those CIOs who are not physicians, I would say, ‘Get to know your CMO,’” she said. “Get elbow-to-elbow with your CMO, and figure out how to make your organization's CMIO position work. And if you don't have one, you'd better get one. And it can't just be the geeky hospital doc who likes computers.”
Added Lee: “You almost want to kind of poll the docs and figure out who, by consensus, is the most clinically efficient doc and the most astute doc, and then see if you can get him or her to be your CMIO.”
Healthcare Informatics 2011 October;28(10):32-46
