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February 5, 2018 Readers Write No Comments

Healthcare CIO Tenure Trends
By Ranae Rousse

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Ranae Rousse is VP of sales for Direct Consulting Associates of Solon, OH.

Last year while supporting one of the many local HIMSS chapter events, a keynote speaker presented a statistic that caught my attention. The speaker was presenting on the rise of cybersecurity threats to healthcare. The first slide in his well-constructed PowerPoint presentation had a bolded “17 months” with a font size of about 200. The gentleman then shared with the attendees, most of whom were CIOs, that 17 months is now the average tenure for a chief information officer.

I asked for the source of the 17-month statistic and found that it was for CISOs rather than CIOs and it was also not specific to healthcare. I decided to do my own research with an independent survey of 1,500 healthcare CIOs. The results:

  • The average tenure for a healthcare CIO is 5.5 years, with the range from five months to 23 years.
  • 37 percent of respondents were not healthcare CIOs in their previous jobs. Those who were tended to have longer tenure in their previous CIO positions.
  • 44 percent of the respondents said they don’t have a succession plan. Those respondents also did not have a requirement to appoint a successor.
  • 69 percent intend to retire as a healthcare CIO, although 11 percent say they would purse a COO/CEO role and the remaining 20 percent were split equally between moving to a consulting job or leaving healthcare.

Increases in mergers, acquisitions, and hospital closures between 2008 and 2017 reflect a loss of roughly 280 hospitals, so the number of CIO positions is decreasing. The perception of the CIO role itself has changed from being a senior IT leader to becoming a higher-level healthcare executive, opening the door for the role of the associate CIO in many large health systems.

Considering this ever-changing landscape; what trends can we anticipate for the future?



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