Accountable Care Redefines The Role Of The CIO

By Katie Wike, contributing writer

Provider accountability is keeping hospital CIOs on their toes and reminding them of their changing role

Jorge Grillo, CIO at Canton-Potsdam Hospital, recognizes that hospital CIOs must evolve if they are to keep up with the demand for accountable care. He recently penned an article for HealthSystemCIO outlining the hurdles CIOs will face and how they can adapt their skill sets to fit a new care model.

In it, Grillo writes, “Whether it is the economy, Obamacare, the cost of insurance, or other drivers, the population management model - which includes ACOs, home health, Medicare Shared Savings programs, and other examples - is driving the need for CIOs to shift their skills and knowledge from being experts on inpatient information and billing systems to a host of other solutions involving practice management systems, data mining, utilization management, and increased complex integration between disparate systems.

“Often this means being able to access and analyze data around population utilization, claims, risk, care gaps, cost effective treatment methodology from a host of different sources - most of which are external to your organization - and figure out a way to manage and mine it to provide value-add information to stakeholders.”

Fierce Health IT notes Grillo’s article “outlines several hurdles that lie ahead for CIOs in making such a transition. Among them:

• Clinician interaction: Committee approaches to patient care likely will be more prevalent, Grillo says. To that end, CIOs will need to communicate with providers ‘more than ever before.’
• Logistics knowledge: In order to provide advice with regard to identifying inexpensive and ‘effective supply chain components,’ CIOs must understand all of the ins and outs associated with their projects, Grillo says.
• Business savvy: CIOs will have to work more with competitors and non-healthcare partners, Grillo says. To that end, they'll need to have ‘broader business relationships,’ as well as a better appreciation of business process.”

Grillo concludes his article acknowledging, “In order to be successful, CIOs must be more agile, have broader business relationships along with greater business process understanding, be able to lead non-IT business areas, and be able to deliver on innovative solutions. Under these new care models, the traditional delivery of IT services and solutions has evolved into a minimum expectation of basic skills that is no longer seen as having true value. CIOs who can evolve and say that they are truly innovative and are able to understand and add value from a true business perspective are those who will see success in the future.”