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5 Must-Haves for CMIO Success

 |  By gshaw@healthleadersmedia.com  
   November 16, 2010

Thinking of adding a chief medical information officer to your IT staff? You can't just pluck anyone from the doctor's lounge and consider the job filled. Here are five key attributes that should be part of the job description for any CMIO.

1. Must have leadership, communication skills
It might seem a little obvious, but CMIOs can't effectively champion electronic health record systems if their peers won't listen to them. "This physician has to be more than just a clinician, they have to be a leader," says Edward Marx, CIO at the 13-hospital Texas Health Resources in Arlington, TX. "That's what helps make an excellent CMIO."

Jon Morris, CMIO at WellStar Health System in Marietta, GA, agrees that the CMIO must be more than a spokesperson. "Don't misunderstand: I'm out there selling a lot of the time, but I also act as an interpreter [and] facilitate engagement of other providers."

Morris' communication skills and the fact that he has the respect of his peers is what makes it work, says Ron Strachan, senior vice president and CIO at WellStar. "Physicians need to be involved and they need to be involved from working with a peer, a respected peer, because I or any other CIO that's not a physician can stand up and essentially preach all day long about values of their involvement in various projects and process change, but I'll never have the credibility with the physicians at large when compared to one of their peers. There's no replacement for that," Strachan says.

2. Must work well with others
The ideal candidate should also have a collaborative and innovative spirit. "I like to be innovative in our use of information technology and finding ways to use technology to drive better performance from the healthcare system, whether that's in terms of the clinical outcomes or patient safety or efficiency," says Ferdinand Velasco, MD, THR's CMIO.  

Marx, he adds, has a similar viewpoint. "He complements me from the standpoint of being very innovative, very focused on continually raising the bar. Those are the attributes that have contributed to our successful working relationship."

3. Must have a passion for IT
A CMIO should also have more than a passing interest in technology. Velasco says he has long been passionate about IT and using it to improve healthcare.

"Even back in the days when I was a medical student, I was doing research and finding ways to use data and information systems, as rudimentary as they were back then, to automate the research process or the clinical processes. And that's something that continued into my residency and in my fellowship," he says. "It was a natural transition to go from that into a formal role as the physician leader for informatics."

4. Must be part of a diverse team
If one clinician in the IT department is good, more than one is even better. At THR, 30% of IT staff members are certified clinicians—and the system recently added its first chief nursing information officer. A CNIO can help build a relationship between technology leaders and nursing leaders and, in turn, reach nurses, who are usually a healthcare organization's largest group of employees.  

5. Must show results
At THR, physician engagement is particularly important—because most physicians are not employed, EHR adoption is voluntary. And although it didn't happen overnight, physician adoption is now "essentially universal," Velasco says. At the 12 hospitals with live EMRs, physicians document more than 90% of their progress notes, CPOE adoption exceeds 80%, and 65% of its order sets are standardized.

"We're very well positioned for meaningful use because of those adoption rates," Velasco says.

Adds CIO Marx: "We would not have achieved the level of success without the CMIO."

You can read more about the CIO-CMIO teams at Texas Health Resources and WellStar Health System here, in this month's issue of HealthLeaders magazine.

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