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The number of chief nursing informatics officers has increased in health systems over the past five years, with more designated CNIO-positions than ever before. The bump comes at a time when the need to bridge the gap between clinical and informatics increasing, according to a recent report commissioned by the workforce search firm Witt/Kieffer.   The research team surveyed 100 respondents from medical centers, independent hospitals and hospitals part of a larger health system to examine the evolving role of the CNIO and whether organizations are recruiting for the position to support the informatics landscape. These results were compared to a similar survey conducted in 2011.   Overall, there are 10 percent more CNIOs in place in organizations than compared to 2011, according to Chris Wierz, principal, Witt/Kieffer Information Technology Practice. While some organizations have created the position of CNIO, others have modified roles to incorporate the CNIO title.   "CNIOs now have a 'seat at the table," Wierz told Healthcare IT News. "From a CNIO perspective, it's so much about collaboration and consensus building; getting those groups of people together when it comes to IT. It's always been about trying to bring disparate groups together to understand the workflow around the electronic medical records and today's IT."   "Communication is a very large role, as well," she added, "acting as a translator between IT and my clinical staff. The ability to articulate your knowledge of IT and clinical is critical in this role."   Depending on the organization, the CNIO is responsible for EMR implementation, clinical IT, optimization of nursing strategy as it relates to IT, and creating a picture of day-to-day operation on clinical IT matters, Wierz said.   Despite the need to bridge these departments, Wierz said there are still many barriers to overcome before the role becomes more commonplace. "One of the reasons this role isn’t gaining enough traction is that there's an IT resistance to it."   Some organizations are lacking the funding for establishing the CNIO position, while other hospitals indicated their organization wasn't big enough to require one, according to the survey.   "Some people will say the reason why they're not implementing a CNIO is because then are you going to need even more "chief" roles," she added. "It's going to be interesting to see whether the CNIO turns into a chief clinical role to help with daily operations."   Twitter: @JessieFDavis Email the writer: jessica.davis@himssmedia.com

Jeffrey Carr, most recently the entrepreneur-in-residence at a startup incubator, has joined Mercy Health as the health system's first chief innovation officer, the health system announced Tuesday. Mercy Health, a Catholic healthcare system, serves Ohio and Kentucky with 21 hospitals in Ohio and two in Kentucky. In his new role, Carr will be responsible for fostering a culture of innovation and investment throughout the system, officials said. "With more than 18 years of technology, consulting and executive experience, Jeff Carr understands the importance of developing strategic, innovative approaches to strengthen an organization," said Drew Banks, Mercy Health's chief strategy officer and Carr's boss, in a statement. [See also: Running list: 2016 notable hires, promotions in health IT.] Before joining Mercy Health, Carr worked as entrepreneur-in-residence at Cintrifuse, which provides services to Cincinnati's burgeoning start-up community. He mentored start-ups, led the effort to create a digital health venture studio and also supported a number of the region's leading organizations working with innovative startups. Carr was one of the founders of the startup Intelemage, which was acquired in April by Medidata, the SaaS technology company that specializes in developing and marketing a cloud-based platform of applications and data analytics to address operations throughout clinical trials. Early in his career, he was one of the leaders at Zoomtown, the high-speed internet access company and startup incubator whose model closely mirrors the open innovation approach he will take at Mercy Health. He has also served as a senior vice president and chief technology officer at Cincinnati Bell, where he led the sale of Cincinnati Bell Wireless to Verizon. Other positions included chief information security officer at GE Aviation, and senior executive at Accenture.

Picture this. One of your IT leaders tells you they have been pulled into a project by a senior executive; they are trying to figure out who in IT owns it. You tell them that another of your leaders owns it. They are working out the specific issues with yet another leader. The first person says it’s still not clear. So you pull all three of them together for 15 minutes and try to sort it out. With a collaborative team that works well together, that 15 minutes is relatively easy. Your first question is who’s on first? You want to know who owns it and what’s going on. My team has learned that one of my questions about problems is “who wakes up in the morning worried about it?”  Not that I want people worrying and losing sleep. But, it’s a way to identify who owns something and is accountable for it. “Who’s on first?” is another one of those questions. It may be a messy, complex project. It may be off to the side or on the fringe but it still needs a clear owner. After just 15 minutes, my three leaders and I confirmed the right roles for each of them, and next steps. And of course we talked about lessons learned. So what did we learn again in this situation? Role clarification – this is critical for all projects, small or large, high priority or not. Clarifying and communicating sponsor, business owner, project manager, and decision makers is key. Communication – proactive communication throughout the life of a project to all members of the core team and the stakeholders is another key. Setting and managing expectations – this is especially true when dealing with many concurrent efforts with the same set of users and stakeholders. It’s also important when a project that seems simple actually has a lot of complex issues:  technical, operational, legal or something else. I’ll bet you can think of a messy project in your experience that swirled or stalled. You might have some bad memories. Most likely, what went wrong ties back to one of these basics. So clarify roles, communicate, and manage expectations, but make sure you know who’s on first. Blog originally posted on www.sueschade.com.

Female CEOs are doing better than ever on the compensation front, with median pay figured at $15.9 million, 21 percent higher than last year. That compared with median pay for male CEOs of $10.4 million, which was down 0.8 percent from 2013. Marissa Mayer, the CEO of Yahoo is at the pinnacle of the top 10 women CEO list, with a salary of $42.1 million. The numbers come from executive compensation benchmarking firm Equilar and the Associated Press. However, there remains a large gap between the number of female CEOs and male CEOs. The study of 340 CEOs included only 17 women. Also, numbers can be tricky. Once they are sliced and diced, the picture comes into better focus. Released along with the list of highest paid women CEOs, was another list – one that ranked highest paid CEOs, regardless of gender. Mayer was the one woman to make that list – at No. 5. As Fast Company pointed out after it crunched the annual paychecks every which way: The top two highest-paid male CEOs make more than all the top-paid female CEOs combined. David Zaslav, the top executive at Discovery Communications, took in $156.1 million in 2014. Leslie Moonves, the CEO of CBS, made $54.4 million. Combined, that's about $210 million. Here are the top 10 women CEOs by compensation: Marissa Mayer: Yahoo, $42.1 million Carol Meyrowitz: TJX Companies, $23.3 million Meg Whitman: Hewlett-Packard, $19.6 million Indra Nooyi: PepsiCo, $19.1 million Phebe Novakovic: General Dynamics, $19 million Virginia Rometty: IBM, $17.9 million Marillyn Hewson: Lockheed Martin, $17.9 million Patricia Woertz: Archer Daniels Midland, $16.3 million Irene Rosenfeld: Mondelez International, $15.9 million Ellen Kullman, DuPont, $13.1 million Other key findings from Equilar: For the first time since 2011, a female executive (Marissa Mayer of Yahoo!) made the list as one of the top 10 highest-paid CEOs with a total compensation of $42.1 million. The four highest paid executives – David Zaslav, Leslie Moonves, Philippe Dauman, and Robert Iger—have all appeared in the top 10 since the study was first published. For CEOs in the current study, median pay increased 0.8 percent between 2013 and 2014 from $10,521,653 to $10,611,031. On average, pay packages in 2014 were composed of 61 percent equity, 36 percent cash and 3 percent other compensation. Female CEOs are outpacing their male colleagues in pay, although they remain vastly outnumbered in the top echelons of American companies. Twitter: @Bernie_HITN Email the writer: bernie.monegain@himssmedia.com

Former Walnut Hill Medical Center CIO will also serve as VP of government relations for the security vendor.

In another big surge for healthcare hiring, the industry added 44,000 jobs in April -- representing more than a quarter of the 160,000 jobs created that month, according to data released Friday by the U.S. Department of Labor's Bureau of Labor Statistics.

A new survey of more than 1,500 women revealed that they frequently encounter obstacles that impact salary and career advancement, according to Women Who Code. Seventy five percent of jobs in the U.S. will require technology skills within the next decade, according to Women Who Code CEO Alaina Percival. “It’s imperative that the industry as a whole become a more welcoming and inclusive place for women who have been drastically underrepresented to date,” Percival said in a statement. “Providing women every available opportunity and resource to succeed is crucial – both for their well being and for the stability of the economy.” Highlighting challenges women face once they enter technology careers, the study also looked at what needs to be done to attract women to technology fields in the first place. Nearly 80 percent of women indicated flexible work hours as critical, and one in four respondents said flexible work hours was the most important factor when considering a career in tech. Half of all respondents, in fact, agreed that balancing their career and personal life is challenging. Women Who Code, a global nonprofit dedicated to inspiring women to excel in technology careers, conducted the research with developer training company Pluralsight. When asked to rank the biggest challenges in their careers, respondents listed lack of opportunities for advancement first, followed closely by lack of female role models and lack of mentorship at work. More than 60 percent of female leaders agreed or strongly agreed with the statement that having more women on their teams would be beneficial. Respondents also cited a lack of confidence and male-dominated work environments as top issues holding back their careers. And while 20 percent of respondents in their 20s and 30s aspire to a vice president or C-level position, more than 50 percent felt uncomfortable asking for a raise and nearly 50 percent felt uncomfortable asking for a promotion. What’s more, women in leadership roles reported being held back by male-dominated work environments at more than twice the rate of women in mid-level positions or below (19 percent vs. 8 percent), while nearly half of respondents ages 21-49 feel that male colleagues are more likely to get promoted than female colleagues. When it comes to salaries, the latest HIMSS Compensation Survey, released at the 2016 HIMSS Annual Conference and Exhibition, found big gaps between men and women holding positions with the same title in the healthcare IT field. Men, on average, earned $126,262, compared to $100,762 for women. Twitter: @Bernie_HITN Email the writer: bernie.monegain@himssmedia.com Like Healthcare IT News on Facebook and LinkedIn

When Republican presidential hopeful Donald Trump accused his presumptive Democrat opponent, Hillary Clinton, of playing the 'woman's card'  in the race to the White House, it backfired. Clinton was the first to respond, unleashing many other retorts from both women and men – and an extra $2.4 million in campaign fundraising. "If fighting for women's health care and paid family leave and equal pay is playing the woman card, then deal me in!" Clinton shot back. One of our favorite commentaries came from Kirsty Styles, writing on thenextweb.com: Styles writes about a deck of cards in production now by a creative sister and brother team which is celebrating famous women, such as Harriet Tubman, Susan B. Anthony, Mary Cassatt and Beyonce. Clinton is the ace in this deck, which is due on the market in July. While enamored of the idea, in her column Styles points out that the Woman Card deck doesn’t reference any female tech innovators who've made America great. [See also: HIMSS compensation survey: Big salary gap between men, women healthcare pros.] Styles suggests three to get the creators of the card deck fired up for tech: Pioneering computer programmer Grace Hopper, Radia ‘don’t call me the Mother of the Internet’ Perlman and women in tech champion Anita Borg. Hmm, maybe someone should create a Women in Health IT card deck. Or maybe it’s enough with the cards already. New York Times columnist Nicholas Kristof writes in his April 30 column, "Trump Plays the Man's Card," that Trump is missing point. "This is the card that in the United States earns women just 92 cents to a male worker’s dollar, less than one-fifth of the seats in Congress, a bare 19 percent of corporate board seats, an assault every nine seconds — and free catcalls and condescension! Frankly, I’ll stick with my MasterCard," Kristof writes. That 92 percent earnings figure stands in contrast with the findings published in a HIMSS compensation survey released this past January. The HIMSS survey reveals that men, on average, earned $126,262, compared to $100,762 for women in the survey of 1,900 healthcare professionals that includes CEOs, CIOs, IT project managers, sales professionals and those with clinical titles such as CMIO and Clinical Systems Analyst. It means that women in health IT make about 80 percent of what men earn in the same positions. Twitter: @Bernie_HITN Email the writer: bernie.monegain@himssmedia.com

Michael Kaiser on how healthcare organizations struggling to find great employees can guard against an array of new cyberthreats. And it begins with finding farm teams akin to ones that Major League Baseball teams use to cultivate players.

The first three months of my interim CIO engagement at University Hospitals has flown by. I’m fortunate to be working with a very talented IT team and we recognize there is always room for improvement. We have already made some very positive changes and improvements. We are tightening up how we manage and monitor the production environment to reduce preventable incidents. We do a root cause analysis on every major incident and review them as a team at our bi-weekly leadership meeting, tracking all subsequent action items. We are making progress on numerous major priority projects and there have been several system upgrades and go lives during this period. We are doing detailed planning for our new hospital integration efforts. We are launching our visual management board and leadership huddle next week as part of our lean efforts. And we have re-established an executive level IT steering committee addressing the critical need for IT governance. Our third IT steering committee will be Monday evening. Our CEO and other senior executives are engaged – exactly what we needed. They are developing a deeper understanding of our current work and the many new requests we have received since this year’s budget was approved. We have reviewed with them how our work aligns with UH strategic goals and ranked the projects in relative priority order. At the upcoming meeting we will discuss our strategy for new hospital integration. In particular, we will look at the impact of system-wide requests before all hospitals are on the core systems. And we will look closely at the new requests – why are they needed this year and how do they align with UH strategy. There is an insatiable demand for IT at UH — just like at every other organization I’ve worked for.  But the “yes machine” can’t continue unless there are tradeoffs. IT leadership teams appreciate it when executives say “it’s OK to say no” and that “there can’t be back doors and end runs when something is not approved”. And that approving new projects at this stage in the year means making tradeoffs –  something has to come off the list or get pushed down to make time for a new project. The scope of responsibilities for our executive IT steering committee is not unique or earth shaking – it is the basics you would expect to see: –      Primary governing body for IT strategy and operations –      Communication ambassador for IT –      Planning for future initiatives and direction –      Balance conflicting priorities –      Guidance on specific projects as needed –      Approve unplanned projects –      Provide input and oversight on IT policies Basic but needed. One of the 4 questions I asked in every executive meet and greet session was: how can I have the greatest impact as an interim?  IT governance was a common response. Just over three months on the job and we are having our third steering committee. I listened and they were ready. For a CIO, that’s a good place to be. Blog originally posted on www.sueschade.com.