By using this site, you agree to the Privacy Policy and Terms of Use.
Accept
Health Works CollectiveHealth Works CollectiveHealth Works Collective
  • Health
    • Mental Health
    Health
    Healthcare organizations are operating on slimmer profit margins than ever. One report in August showed that they are even lower than the beginning of the…
    Show More
    Top News
    HIPPA compliance
    How Medical Office Staff Can Make Your Practice HIPAA Compliant
    October 29, 2021
    Everything you need to know about hyaluronic acid treatment
    Everything you need to know about hyaluronic acid treatment
    February 10, 2022
    Which Mushroom Capsules Are Good for Your Health?
    May 5, 2022
    Latest News
    6 Easy Healthcare Ways to Sit Less and Move More Every Day
    September 10, 2025
    7 Most Common Healthcare Accreditation Programs: Which Should You Use?
    August 20, 2025
    Hospital Pest Control and the Fight Against Superbugs
    August 20, 2025
    Hygiene Beyond The Clinic: Attention To Overlooked Non-Clinical Spaces
    August 13, 2025
  • Policy and Law
    • Global Healthcare
    • Medical Ethics
    Policy and Law
    Get the latest updates about Insurance policies and Laws in the Healthcare industry for different geographical locations.
    Show More
    Top News
    Clinical Trials
    Can You Participate in a Clinical Trial?
    April 28, 2022
    5 Things to Take Care of When You Go Into Hospital
    July 24, 2020
    Pharmacists help you
    How A Pharmacist Can Help You
    November 28, 2022
    Latest News
    Healthcare at a Crossroads: Why Leadership Matters More Than Ever
    September 9, 2025
    How Social Security Disability Shapes Access to Care and Everyday Health
    August 22, 2025
    How a DUI Lawyer Can Help When Your Future Health Feels Uncertain
    August 22, 2025
    How One Fall Can Lead to a Long Road of Medical Complications
    August 22, 2025
  • Medical Innovations
  • News
  • Wellness
  • Tech
Search
© 2023 HealthWorks Collective. All Rights Reserved.
Reading: Top 5 Strategic Planning Challenges for CIOs
Share
Notification Show More
Font ResizerAa
Health Works CollectiveHealth Works Collective
Font ResizerAa
Search
Follow US
  • About
  • Contact
  • Privacy
© 2023 HealthWorks Collective. All Rights Reserved.
Health Works Collective > Policy & Law > Health Reform > Top 5 Strategic Planning Challenges for CIOs
BusinesseHealthHealth ReformMedical RecordsTechnology

Top 5 Strategic Planning Challenges for CIOs

Abby Norman
Abby Norman
Share
7 Min Read
Strategic Planning
SHARE

Strategic PlanningThe Chief Information Officer in a healthcare system has perhaps one of the most complex and ever-evolving roles in the hospital C-Suite today. Since information technology has now permeated our entire culture – and particularly in medicine – executive level information management is hot field nowadays.

Contents
  • 1. Strategic Planning – Meaningful Use
  • 2. Strategic Planning – Health Information Exchange (HIE)
  • 3. Strategic Planning – The Great Healthcare Reform
  • 4. Strategic Planning – HIPAA
  • 5. Strategic Planning – Telemedicine

Strategic PlanningThe Chief Information Officer in a healthcare system has perhaps one of the most complex and ever-evolving roles in the hospital C-Suite today. Since information technology has now permeated our entire culture – and particularly in medicine – executive level information management is hot field nowadays.

Strategic planning within an organization tends to encompass many areas – but for the Chief Information Officer, most of their planning requirements fall under the category of information management. For most modern hospitals, information management is largely to do with electronic health records and the business transactions that surround them. While CIOs are not down in the trenches laying the groundwork for databases or troubleshooting minor issues, they are overseeing the purchasing, implementation and staffing needs to make the whole operation run smoothly.

That being said, there are many strategic planning challenges that CIOs are facing these days.

More Read

Medical Device Approval Process Under Fire
WSJ: Google Health Might Get Less Support Under New CEO
EHR and Changing Healthcare Dimensions
Application and Challenges of IoT in Healthcare
Looming PR Challenge: When Physicians’ Pay Links to Quality of Care

1. Strategic Planning – Meaningful Use

Actually, when it comes to current challenges in healthcare, Meaningful Use isn’t limited to CIOs! However, a good portion of Meaningful Use requirements revolve around information technology, so in some hospitals who are looking to achieve the next stage of Meaningful Use, the CIOs may be bearing the brunt of the workload right now. Since a hospital’s success at moving through each stage of Meaningful Use is directly tied to Medicare reimbursement, there is a significant financial penalty if your hospital doesn’t meet the stage – and if the task at hand involves your EMR, the CIO is probably feeling the heat.

2. Strategic Planning – Health Information Exchange (HIE)

Sort of dovetailing with Meaningful Use requirements are those found in the HITECH Act. Within these requirements you’ll find the daunting task of developing pathways for sharing information with patients. It’s no longer just enough to make sure that care is coordination amongst doctors through EMRs, now CIOs are tasked with figure out how to provide a secure and easy to navigate patient portal that allows patients, too, to have 24/7 access to their medical records and a way to communicate with their physician electronically. Not only is this difficult from a medicolegal perspective, but there are also concerns about health literacy to undertake.

3. Strategic Planning – The Great Healthcare Reform

Since we know how well the roll-out for Obamacare went online, CIOs are probably feeling anxious about the requirement for health insurance exchanges. Patients now need to be able to purchase health insurance in this manner and, while it might have seemed like a pretty straight forward task to undertake, if you remember the SNAFU of the initial healthcare.gov rollout, than you can begin to see that there are mounting challenges for developing these exchanges – and it doesn’t always have to do with planning and development – technical malfunctions can happen even at the highest level of the government.

4. Strategic Planning – HIPAA

We all know the knock-knock joke.

Knock, knock.

Who’s there?

HIPAA!

HIPAA who?

Sorry, I can’t tell you.

HIPAA compliance is perhaps one of the most frustrating challenges for CIOs because when it comes to protecting a healthcare organization from breaches, all of this new patient presence across the web opens up so many opportunities for hackers to steal information – in particular, patient identifiers that are a buffet for identity theft. Patient information as it is kept in hospital electronic records and computer-to-computer communication is heavily encrypted – but even as the processes for encryption grow harder to crack, so too do the hackers become more advanced. Some hospitals are actually developing EMR hackathons in order to safely identify areas of weakness within their infrastructure that could be entrance points for potential thieves. This is a major focus not just for CIOs, but the entire C-Suite, as HIPAA compliance stretches beyond information technology. It isn’t enough to develop HIPAA compliant programs – a CIO also needs to be constantly reevaluating and looking for ways to improve – the only way to outsmart a breach is to stay one step-ahead of the hackers.

5. Strategic Planning – Telemedicine

For urban hospitals, telemedicine probably seems like the logical next step. In places where Google Fiber already exists, the prospect of having reliable internet connectivity not only within a hospital system, but within the entire national network of healthcare providers probably seems not too far off. But for rural hospitals, where the reliability of internet connection is inconsistent at best, CIOs at these facilities are growing increasingly concerned that they’ll fall behind. It’s not that these hospitals don’t want to incorporate the technology, quite the opposite. They would willingly embrace it but their location makes it either impossible or nearly impossible for telemedicine to be reliably implemented at their facility. CIOs in these situations need to be not only connected to the internet providers – and willing to demand services that are so desperately needed for the to remain competitive, but also creative. Telemedicine is, perhaps, the next frontier of medicine and with more than 2,000 registered rural hospitals (AHA) in the United States – and the CIOs at those facilities have a great task ahead of them in the coming years.

TAGGED:EMRHIEHIPAAtelemedicine
Share This Article
Facebook Copy Link Print
Share
By Abby Norman
My name is Abby Norman and I am a healthcare blogger. With over 10 years of experience in the medical field, I have developed a passion for helping others understand the complexities of healthcare.

Stay Connected

1.5kFollowersLike
4.5kFollowersFollow
2.8kFollowersPin
136kSubscribersSubscribe

Latest News

a woman walking on the hallway
6 Easy Healthcare Ways to Sit Less and Move More Every Day
Health
September 9, 2025
Clinical Expertise
Healthcare at a Crossroads: Why Leadership Matters More Than Ever
Global Healthcare
September 9, 2025
travel nurse in north carolina
Balancing Speed and Scope: Choosing the Nursing Degree That Fits Your Goals
Nursing
September 1, 2025
intimacy
How to Keep Intimacy Comfortable as You Age
Relationship and Lifestyle Senior Care
September 1, 2025

You Might also Like

obamacare
Health ReformPolicy & LawPublic Health

Coming: A Two-Tiered Health Care System

May 31, 2013

Expect Modest Growth in Health Spending through 2013

June 16, 2012

Theranos for President?

November 17, 2015
Hospital Marketing, Patient Acquisition, Online Marketing
BusinessFinanceHospital Administration

5 Hospital Marketing Strategies to Improve Patient Acquisition

February 15, 2014
Subscribe
Subscribe to our newsletter to get our newest articles instantly!
Follow US
© 2008-2025 HealthWorks Collective. All Rights Reserved.
  • About
  • Contact
  • Privacy
Welcome Back!

Sign in to your account

Username or Email Address
Password

Lost your password?