CMIO Roundtable, Part 2: A Constant In A Sea Of Change

It’s amazing. You can find four CMIOs (three currently in the role and one retired) from four very different organizations, but the primary goal is the same: to help accelerate EHR implementation and guide optimization to ensure that systems are being utilized to their full potential, all while seeking to prevent physician burnout.

It’s a rather lofty goal, and it requires an individual with solid interpersonal and communication skills, participating in strategic planning, a solid understanding of the business, and of course, a strong knowledge of both the IT and clinical departments. It takes a certain type to fill this role, and we found four of the best in the industry — Maia Hightower, Brian Patty, Stan Huff, and George Reynolds — to talk about the challenges they face as CMIOs, how the role has evolved, and the skillsets all health IT leaders will need going forward.

In this three-part roundtable discussion, we’ll discuss why it’s critical to get to the root of physician burnout and dissatisfaction; the balancing act CMIOs have in working with vendors to determine where responsibilities fall; the need to act as a bridge between IT and clinicians; how the role of CMIO has gone from “checking boxes” to focusing on the health and well-being of patients; and it comes down to 90 percent communication, 10 percent technical.

Chapter 1

Chapter 2



* Shifting from implementation to optimization

* “It’s a balancing act”

* Downside of moving to value-based care: “It creates more decision support & more documentation requirements.”

* Post-implementation — “Now the real heavy work is starting”

* Bridge between IT & clinical

* CMIO as change agent — “It isn’t just about flipping a switch.”

* Aligning cultures

* Evolution from CPOE adoption leader to global leader



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Bold Statements

The bright people that we have are not interested with simply fiddling with the configuration switches within Cerner. They’re going to go somewhere else if they can’t find more engaging work. So that’s a challenge for us.

Some of the work we’re doing with care team management is really taking that team approach to care and taking as much administrative burden off of our providers as possible so we can get them back to talking with their patients and caring for their patients — not caring for the EMR.

I’ve talked with CMIOs who have completed an implementation and find themselves out of a job because the organization failed to understand that now the real heavy work is just starting, rather than being completed. Finding ways to demonstrate value while not putting ridiculous burdens on your physicians is much more challenging than just getting them to use the EMR.

Part of my job is to empower my team and to provide those leadership skills so that they can help be change agents within their micro cultures; that they’re able to speak the language of IT and organizational behavior, as well as the individual cultures they’re coming from.

Kate Gamble:  As far as that shift from implementation training to really looking at optimization, is that something that you’re pretty heavily involved with at this point?

Stan Huff:  Yes. We’re having discussions now to say how we can change the actual organization reporting lines and direct report responsibilities to optimize for enhancing the system as opposed to the implementation, and we haven’t got an answer yet. I wish I could say more. But it’s a very active conversation because there are lots of questions about how much we contract for Cerner resources to do ...