Feature: Role of chief knowledge officer could be on the rise in healthcare
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| Cynthia Zak, health information management and privacy director at Milford Hospital in Westport, Conn. |
Information vs. knowledge
HIM directors are the “custodians of health data and information,” Zak said. “As HIM professionals, we look at the collection, processing and delivery of health information because we’re responsible for its accuracy, security and accessibility. When you get into knowledge, it’s more about taking the multiple experiences of people, the intelligence within your organization, and using that intelligence to leverage it for strategic benefits,” she continued.
Zak does not predict that CKOs will replace HIM directors, but that HIM directors will serve a function essential to a CKO’s objective.
“Information management will be the foundation for knowledge because all that information has to be complete, it has to be accurate and it has to be timely,” she said. Information and data integrity is necessary for a solid information foundation.
Zak compared information to a recipe and knowledge to an instructional cooking show. It’s understood that someone possessed knowledge to write the recipe. The recipe has all the information necessary to make a meal, but the expert TV show host possesses the experience and know-how to make sense of that information.
Zak referred to that kind of know-how as intellectual capital and said it would be the responsibility of a CKO to connect information with intellectual capital in order to enhance the value of each.
Collaboration
Transforming or bonding information with intellectual capital to optimize the value of knowledge will require collaboration, Zak said.
“Healthcare organizations are very silo-oriented: they’ve got the medical records, they’ve got the lab, they’ve got the physicians,” she said. “If we could just pull all the experiences and perspectives, which by definition, is knowledge, that those people have in their heads and leverage that for strategic benefit, it’s like group genius.”
To foster that collaboration, CKOs will possess a broad skill set. They will need to develop relationships with their various stakeholders in the healthcare industry.
She said that a CKO must understand the applications of health IT, end-to-end, to enable “a knowledge culture, the open sharing of the knowledge among different partners resulting in the sharing of risk and rewards.”
“Wouldn’t it be a wonderful thing if we knew what each other needed and wanted and shared it so that the patient was the ultimate beneficiary?” Zak asked.
Why now?
Zak suggested that emerging initiatives, such as ICD-10, and new delivery models, such as accountable care organizations, will illuminate the need for more effective knowledge management.
“With ICD-10, you’re going to get a lot of data and information and it’s going to be richer and more granular,” she said. “If you’re coding a hip replacement, you’re going to have seven characters.”
That kind of complexity will require more cognitive and critical thinking, she said. “You’re going to need to pull everyone together to see how you can use that information to improve patient care, reduce costs and add value.”
Zak said that although the concept of a CKO is new to the healthcare industry, it is gaining traction in other industries, such as energy production.
Zak believes that healthcare organizations may be wise to follow suit. An individual dedicated to knowledge management will enable healthcare organizations to keep up with the multiple demands of an industry constantly in flux.
“We re-engineer, but by the time we’re done, it’s outdated, so you need constant innovation, constant change,” she said.
“Healthcare is becoming information-based, and markets are shifting. We’ve had healthcare reform, technologies proliferating and competition is becoming fierce,” she said. “As those initiatives are happening, there are going to be partnerships developing. The sharing of information and knowledge is going to distinguish the successful versus the non-successful.”