HIMSS Leadership Survey results show evolution of thoughts on HIT, HIT leaders

Healthcare's evolution from volume to value is changing the view of health IT and health IT executives, according to results from the 2016 HIMSS Leadership Survey.

Clinical IT executives are expected to play an increasingly significant role in ensuring health IT is appropriately leveraged to positively impact care outcomes.

The vast majority (79 percent) of respondents associated health IT as a strategically critical tool to help a healthcare organization’s patient care focused efforts. Respondents named clinical integration (74 percent), primary care provider efficiency (72 percent), mandated quality metrics improvement (68 percent) and care coordination (67 percent).

However, differences are seen when comparing organizations that employ a clinical IT executive with those that don't. Those with a clinical IT executive agreed that health IT is a strategically clinical tool at a rate of 86 percent, compared with just 62 percent of those hospitals without a clinical IT executive.

Seventy-one percent said their organization has a clinical IT executive: that position is the CMIO (53 percent), CNIO (19 percent), or chief clinical informatics officer (14 percent), with another 44 percent saying it's another senior clinical IT leader.

“Clinical IT executives clearly possess a unique and valued perspective regarding the criticality of health IT on an organization’s patient care focused efforts, and this orientation appears to be gaining traction in many organizations” said Lorren Pettit, HIMSS vice president, research, in a release. “And while clinical IT executives are part of the overall executive team in many healthcare organizations, their presence is not universally true. We will definitely continue to explore and track these issues in future HIMSS research studies.”

Access the complete survey results.