At Listrunner, our work with physicians brings us in intimate contact with hospital and health system CIOs. Over the last year, we’ve had more CIO meetings, phone calls, and emails than we can count.

As we’ve gotten to know the people in these roles, we decided to regularly ask two questions on top the planning we’re having around bringing Listrunner to their physicians:

What keeps you up at night?

What do you want to achieve as a CIO?

We make a point of sharing these insights internally and recently took the time to synthesize our findings. We’re now sharing them publicly as CIOs are an important stakeholder in improving the state of healthcare.

The following perspectives are from CIOs from independent community hospitals to large health system networks anchored by leading tertiary centers. About half are from the US and half from around the world.

What keeps you up at night?

Security

Every CIO mentioned security as the first and foremost concern. Interestingly, more talk of breaches as when they happen rather than if they will. Rather than just talking about preventing a breach, CIOs are also building plans on how to:

Detect and report intrusions quickly to limit the damage. Manage public and media relations when an incident occurs.

Reliability

As hospitals move to digital systems, they are becoming dependent on them. Next to losing patient data, CIOs are most worried about ensuring patient data is available to clinicians.

Consolidation

Particularly in the US, hospitals and physician practices are quickly consolidating. The CIOs overseeing the assimilation of smaller hospitals into their network face challenges in transitioning a variety of legacy systems into their own. As important though, how does the acquiring hospital network transition and integrate acquired physicians — who are often unwilling — into their electronic systems.

Fragmentation

If you’re reading this, you likely have a new idea on how the hospital could be better? As far as a CIO is concerned, join the crowd that is alread underfunded department to gain access and approval.

CIOs repeatedly told of us of their responsibility to protect the hospital from jumping on the next best thing without any consideration of how different solutions integrate and scale.

What do you want to achieve as a CIO?

Physician satisfaction

Most CIOs readily recognize that EMRs have slowed physicians down and have increased the burden of documentation on clinicians. CIOs are under pressure not only to optimize worklows but to improve clinician quality of life. Some CIOs report that their compensation is directly tied to physician satisfaction with IT.

Recognition as innovators

There is a desire for hospitals to be recognized amongst both providers and patients as innovators. CIOs are looking for ways differentiate their hospitals for others and get their hosptials brand recognized.

Ease of use of electronic systms is seen as competitive advantage to recruit and retain doctors. The CIO wants to be seen as making the doctors life easier and letting them get back to focus on medicine and not paperwork.