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2008 CMIO and Physician IT Survey Report

Facts, Salaries and Advice from Chief Medical Information Officers and
Physician Informaticists

Factors Demanding Clinical IT Leadership

  • Implementation of EHR and CPOE systems
  • Patient safety and clinical quality
  • Public reporting, transparency, consumer-driven health care
  • Clinical transformation projects
  • Increased spending on clinical information systems

Survey Methodology

  • Survey designed to gather information from physician IT leaders
  • Conducted December 2008 and distributed to more than 90 CMIOs and Physician Informaticists
  • Response rate was 34% with 31 CMIOs participating and representation from 18 states

Participant Demographics

  • 87% of respondents are from hospitals, large health systems and academic medical centers
  • 13% represent vendors including health care products and disease management
  • 30% of respondents have CMIO title and 30% have Medical Director of Clinical Informatics

Titles Represented

  • Chief Information Officer/VP
  • Chief Medical Information Officer
  • Executive VP, Health Intelligence
  • Senior VP, Chief Science Officer
  • Vice President, Clinical Innovation
  • Vice President, System Design
  • Corporate Director, Medical Informatics
  • Medical Director of Clinical Informatics
  • Medical Director of Information Systems
  • Informatics Officer

Degrees Represented

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Time Allocation

  • Average time allocation is split 90% executive IT and 10% clinical
  • 39% of respondents spend almost all their time on executive/IT responsibilities
  • Other executive/IT time allocations were:
    • 23% spend 90%
    • 19% spend 80%
    • 10% spend 70-75%
    • 6% spend 60-66%
  • One physician's time was split 50/50

Staff Management

  • 75% of respondents have staff reporting to them ranging from 2 to 200 employees
  • 39% have more than 75 employees
  • 39% have 6-50 employees
  • 22% have 5 or fewer employees

Medical Specialties Represented

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Other specialties include:

  • Emergency Medicine
  • Gastroenterology
  • Head and Neck Surgery
  • Internal Medicine/Cardiology
  • Internal Medicine/Pediatrics
  • Pediatric Critical Care
  • Pediatric Infectious Diseases
  • Pulmonary Critical Care
  • Trauma Surgery Critical Care

Why Did Physicians Choose IT?

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2008 Compensation

  • Among all survey respondents, the average base salary was $253,521 and average total compensation was $315,730
  • The largest base was $400,000 and largest total compensation was $600,000
  • 83% received a bonus varying from 2% to 100%
  • Other compensation included auto allowance, housing allowance, tuition, SERP

Physicians' Role in IT

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Reporting Relationships

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Barriers to Success in IT

  • Leadership (e.g., C-Suite, engineers, other clinical leaders) taking contributions seriously
  • Resistance of colleagues
  • Attraction to high-tech gadgets is a recipe for failure
  • Budgetary resources to make it “go”
  • A focus on details rather than strategy
  • Lack of IT knowledge and of management and people skills

Recommendations for Success

  • Continue learning: pursue an advanced business or informatics degree
  • Stay in practice at least part-time
  • Strengthen change-agent and project manager skills
  • Volunteer for clinical IT committees and projects
  • IT and EHR are tools not the end-point

Value of Clinical Training

Informaticists with clinical training can:

  • Translate data into useful information to guide business and clinical decision-making
  • Clearly communicate clinical problems and anticipate system problems in advance
  • Facilitate physician adoption
  • Evaluate data critically and with credibility

Conclusions from Survey

  • More than 70% of respondents have advanced degrees
  • Internal medicine (26%) and family medicine (19%) lead as medical specialties
  • 77% are members of Healthcare Information Management and Systems Society (HIMSS)
  • 39% spend a majority of time on executive/IT duties
  • 75% of the physicians have staff reporting to them
  • 57% in current position for 1-4 years

Conclusions from Survey

  • 58% of respondents are in their first IT position
  • More than 77% of physicians chose IT due to the strategic impact of IT on the field of medicine
  • Average base salary was $253,521 and average total compensation was $315,730. Vendor organizations reported larger base and total compensation levels
  • 90% view their main role in IT as Informatics Leader
  • 45% report to Chief Information Officer, 16% to CMO/VPMA and 14% to CEO

For additional information regarding the survey, please contact Lois Dister.