AMDIS: CMIOs need to become more business savvy, survey shows
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“This decade brings the second wave of major change for the CMIO role,” she said. “The first decade was largely consumed with general acceptance of the need and funding for the full-time CMIO, and now there are evolving responsibilities, growing resources and expanded accountability, from clinician acceptance of EHR to harvesting value from information and communication technologies [ICT].”
Respondents’ answers, fielded in July via the AMDIS list serve, are not representative of all health systems and there is "an indeterminate bias from AMDIS member status,” Gartner noted. The survey sought individuals in CMIO/CIO roles in healthcare delivery organizations.
Among the survey findings:
- 81 percent are from integrated delivery systems with physician practices and 9 percent are from single hospitals;
- Most have enterprise-wide responsibilities;
- Fifty-eight percent have 75 to 100 percent of inpatient orders placed via computerized provider order entry; and
- Fifty-nine percent have 75 to 100 percent of employed/outpatient services physicians using ambulatory EMRs.
Sixty-four percent of the respondents indicated that this was their first CMIO position, down from 81 percent in 2010 and the lowest in seven years of conducting the survey. Most new CMIOs still come from within the health system, the Gartner survey said.
However, the aspirations of CMIOs have shifted slightly from previous years—71 percent of respondents said they want to stay in the CMIO job long-term (14 percent would like to do so at a different institution). In addition,
- 7 percent would like to become CIOs
- 7 percent would like to become CEOs/COOs
- 4 percent would like to become CMOs
Fifty-six percent of respondents were age 50 or older, and 44 percent were 30 to 40 years old.
The survey also sought to assess the CMIOs’ biggest challenges or concerns with later-stage meaningful use criteria and transition to an accountable care organization (ACO).
For later-stage meaningful use, CMIOs' top challenges or concerns were with assembling and reporting the required data; complexity or confusion about the criteria; and a lack of executive leaders and change management.
In regards to making the transition to an ACO, their top concerns and challenges were: inadequate compensation relative to the risk; gaps in IT systems for care management; gaps in business, clinical analytics and reporting; and confusion over criteria.
“While we may find the reporting challenges of meaningful use and ACOs daunting, the true analytics required to manage modern hospital operations and manage coordinated care are very substantial and the next big challenge,” Shaffer said. “Similar to the dawn of informatics, there currently aren’t the varied skill sets in healthcare to tackle these issues.”
For CMIO compensation, there continues to be “a very wide range of salaries, reflecting an equally wide range of experience, but there is some correlation between salary with medical specialties and number of staff,” she said. Salaries currently range from $150,000 to $500,000 or more, but most salaries are clustered around the $250,000 to $300,000 range and the $345,000 to $375,000 range. These ranges are consistent with several years of the compensation surveys, Shaffer said.
In addition, 41 percent of the CMIOs reported that they receive salary alone, whereas 49 percent receive salary plus a bonus.
Based on the data gathered from these surveys, Shaffer recommended that CMIOs:
- Make time for the expanded role and different level and type of accountability, including usability and value; performance analytics and dashboards; operating cost control, utilization and patient throughput; ICT support of bundled services, chronic disease for ACO management, such as profitability, risk mitigation, revenue growth and quality; extending the patient-provider relationship; and telehealth.
- Learn about cost accounting.
- Develop executive/communication and personnel management skills.
- Learn about/execute portfolio management.