Health system CIOs spent years as the technically proficient expert tasked with EHR roll outs, cybersecurity and IT tickets. That's no longer enough.
"All of us as CIOs need to act like we are executives first and technology people second," said Daniel Barchi, CIO of Chicago-based CommonSpirit Health, during the Becker's Health IT + Digital Health + Revenue Cycle Conference in early October. "If we show up as the 'senator from technology,' we're going to be granted a little bit of time, but then every time they look at us, they're going to think we're a router speaking and not really a leader in the organization."
The requests and insights from CIOs focused primarily on technology are easy to brush off as self-serving; other C-suite members will think their ideas and budget requests only benefit IT. But the executive-focused CIO can dispel that notion with hard numbers showing the financial benefits of their request.
"As long as we keep in mind that we have a mission, especially for a Catholic faith-based organization, we have a mission that's about the patient first and then we have a duty to make sure we've got good revenue coming in," said Mr. Barchi. "That's true for all health systems, and then what we do as HR or finance or IT or clinical or operations facilities, that all supports the first two."
All executive leaders should work together to create a vision and paint the picture of what that looks like to their teams to gain buy-in. Every team member should feel tied to the larger vision and understand how their work impacts system goals.
Michael Restuccia, senior vice president and CIO of Penn Medicine, takes a similar view of his role within the broader C-suite.
"We've taken the energy every two years to look at our project management office and the big projects we've completed, and those projects in particular that have financial benefit because again, that's how the CFO speaks, and we call that our benefits realization summary," said Mr. Restuccia. "We put it in a nice packet, about 30 to 40 different projects we summarize, and it literally shows how we enable millions, if not hundreds of millions of dollars worth of benefit to the organization. If you can show that, then you might get a little bit more."