Q&A with CMIO Mark Weisman, Part 2: “We don’t want data; we want information.”

During the past few weeks, so much has changed because of the COVID-19 outbreak. One thing that hasn’t changed — one thing that can’t change — is the CMIO’s core objective: to make life easier for providers, according to Mark Weisman, MD. For his team at Peninsula Regional Medical Center, that means removing hard stops and eliminating alerts that don’t provide value. “We still have the same priorities in terms of making this tool easier, even in the middle of a healthcare crisis.”

Recently, Dr. Weisman spoke with healthsystemCIO about how the organization is working to accommodate more patients during the pandemic while also maintaining quality care, whether that means ramping up telemedicine efforts or setting up makeshift clinics. He also discussed PRMC’s multifaceted strategy to address and reduce clinician burnout, the evolution of the CMIO from “buffer” to true leader, how he hopes the role will continue to grow, and the advice he offers for CIOs who want to develop stronger relationships with clinicians.

Part 1

Part 2



* Working closely with the COO

* Coming to PRMC after 18 years with Sentara

* The CMIO’s evolution from “buffer” to leader

* Areas of opportunity: finance, analytics & data visualization

* Protecting providers from being inundated with data – “We need to do a better job of that.”

* The future of robotic process automation: “I can’t wait.”

* Biggest fears: declining reimbursements & cyber threats

* Launching his own podcast – “It’s not about me; it’s about other CMIOs and what they’re doing.”



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Bold Statements

The CMIO needs to advance across the country to a higher level, particularly in understanding the business of the hospital and the business of healthcare. That relates a lot to population health and how can we add value and use clinical decision support to deliver better outcomes.

Being able to say, ‘here’s the clinical problem,’ and helping that analyst produce the graphs and the data that tells the story, is so important. That’s another skill I think CMIOs should be focusing on.

As CMIOs, we need to protect our providers so that they don’t get inundated with data dumps into their in-box, where they’re getting hundreds of blood pressure readings, pulse oximetry readings, and Apple Watch telemetry readings. We need to do a better job of that.

I’m most excited about robotic process automation. Humans are doing so much of this manual process data entry garbage; I can’t wait until robots takes it over and we let the computers do this stuff.

It’s not just providing us with data, but with information. I don’t need to see every single glucose they had while they were in the hospital six years ago. I need to understand whether the patient is sick right now or not, and what it is I should focus on.

Gamble:  You talked before about building relationships with other C-suite members, which is obviously so important. What’s been your strategy in doing that?

Weisman:  The CMIO role is such a relationship-oriented role. The first relationship I thought was key to form was with my CNIO. She’s great. That’s a relationship I’ve continued to work on, and we learn from each other. She has a ton of nursing experience and understands parts of the organization that I had very little previous exposure to, and vice versa.