34 CMIOs to know

Eric Oliver -

The role of the CMIO is gaining importance in healthcare as hospitals and health systems seek to marry clinical processes with information systems. Health IT is emerging as a priority for many healthcare providers, largely bolstered by federal initiatives and a push toward interoperability and data exchanges.

The following 34 CMIOs are leaders in their field, offering their hospitals and health systems expertise both clinically and technologically.

Note: The following leaders were collected through peer nominations and editorial research. There are no fees involved and no one can pay to be included on this list. They are presented in alphabetical order.

Becker's Hospital Review would like to continuously update this list with notable CMIOs. To recommend an update, please contact Eric Oliver at eoliver@beckershealthcare.com.

Gregory Ator, MD, University of Kansas Hospital (Kansas City). Dr. Ator's tenure has been characterized by using patient data to improve the hospital's clinical and financial performance, and developing and implementing systems that give providers access to relevant and actionable information at the point of care. He is also an advocate for engaging physicians in the health IT implementation process.

Colin Banas, MD, Virginia Commonwealth University Medical Center (Richmond). Dr. Banas has been a hospitalist at VCUMC since he completed medical school in 2002. In July 2010, he took on CMIO duties as well, and since then has led the development of several tools that help VCUMC clinicians use data to provide better patient care. These include a dashboard that pulls EHR data to alert nurses to high-risk patients and an early warning system that displays a "sickness score" using vitals to flag deteriorating patients before alarms go off.

Michael Blum, MD, UCSF Medical Center (San Francisco). Dr. Blum has been the CMIO for UCSF for more than 12 years. During his tenure he has been responsible for the implementation of clinical information systems, data warehousing and analytics. In May 2013, he was named the Association Vice Chancellor for Informatics. Additionally, Dr. Blum is a professor of cardiology at the UCSF School of Medicine specializing in inpatient and ambulatory cardiology practice.

Louis Capponi, MD, Cleveland Clinic Health Systems. Dr. Capponi became the CMIO at the Cleveland Clinic in October 2014 after serving as the CMIO for more than 10 years at NYC Health + Hospitals (formerly New York City Health and Hospitals Corporation). He was a primary care physician and medical director at Gouverneur Healthcare Services, in New York City, starting in 1994. At the Cleveland Clinic, Dr. Capponi is responsible for planning, implementing and governing electronic health records.

Henry Chueh, MD, Massachusetts General Hospital (Boston). Dr. Chueh is the chief of the division of biomedical informatics. He is also the director of the Massachusetts General Hospital - Lab of Computer Science. In his position, Dr. Chueh is using biomedical informatics to help innovate the health information systems at the hospital. Dr. Chueh has been a fellow with the American College of Medical Informatics since 1999.

Bruce Darrow, MD, Mount Sinai Hospital (New York City). Dr. Darrow has been the CMIO for Mount Sinai Hospital since February 2012. During his tenure as SMIO, the Health Information Management Systems Society awarded the hospital the 2012 Davies Enterprise Award for excellence in health information technology and use of electronic records to improve quality of care and patient safety. Dr. Darrow is board certified in clinical informatics by the American Board of Preventive Medicine. In addition to his CMIO honors, Dr. Darrow was a four-time nominee and the 2012 winner of the Attending Physician of the Year Award by the department of nursing.

Bimal Desai, MD, The Children's Hospital of Philadelphia. Dr. Desai, a pediatrician, has been at CHOP his entire career. He became CMIO in 2010 and is currently overseeing a multi-year comprehensive EHR implementation project. He is also an assistant professor of clinical pediatrics at the Perelman School of Medicine at the University of Pennsylvania and is on the clinical informatics board review course faculty with the American Medical Informatics Association. In addition, he is currently the CMO of Haystack Informatics, developer of solutions to help hospital officials monitor EHR access data to detect potential breaches.

Nicholas Desai, MD, Houston Methodist Hospital. Dr. Desai is the CMIO at Houston Methodist. Before accepting the position he was the system medical director of information technology. While at the hospital, Dr. Desai has implemented a health information exchange mechanism to manage health IT across the systems' various facilities.

Peter Schuyler Greene, MD, John Hopkins Medicine (Baltimore). Dr. Greene was appointed CMIO of John Hopkins Medicine in 2006. He implemented both a provider order entry and a clinical documentation system. He also developed a single portal for clinical e-learning across the hospital. In his professional field, Dr. Green has served as the chair of the society of thoracic surgeons information technology committee. He is also the founder, executive editor and key architect of the Cardiothoracic Surgery Network, an online community with 40 professional cardiothoracic surgery societies. He has more than 15 years experience in the information technology field.

C. William Hanson III, MD, Hospitals of the University of Pennsylvania-Penn Presbyterian (Philadelphia). Dr. Hanson is the CMIO at the University of Pennsylvania Health System. He has been a faculty member with the health system for the past 26 years. Dr. Hanson has extensive experience in medical informatics and was a visiting professor in the Princeton University department of computer science from 2002 to 2005. He is also a practicing internist, anesthesiologist and intensivist. His speciality is in cardiac anesthesia.

Stan Huff, MD, Intermountain Healthcare (Salt Lake City). Dr. Huff has been CMIO of Intermountain since 2006 and is responsible for the architecture and functionality of all of the organization's clinical information systems. He has been a pioneer in the medical database architecture field for 20 years and is currently the chair of Health Level Seven International, the interoperability and standards committee, and a member of HHS' Health IT Standards Committee. He is also a professor in the biomedical informatics department at the University of Utah School of Medicine, focusing on medical vocabulary and data exchange standards.

Christopher Jaeger, MD, Sutter Health (Sacramento). As CMIO, Dr. Jaeger led the development of a health information exchange that connects Sutter hospitals and physicians with neighboring, non-affiliated providers, improving care coordination in the communities Sutter serves. He joined Sutter in 2007 as physician director of EHR hospital clinical applications and assumed his current duties in 2008. Prior to joining Sutter, Dr. Jaeger was the EHR physician-lead at Sutter-affiliate California Pacific Medical Center in San Francisco. He also was an assistant clinical professor at the University of California at San Francisco School of Medicine until April 2014.

Brent Lambert, MD, Carolinas HealthCare System (Charlotte). In 2010, Dr. Lambert joined Carolinas HealthCare System as its first CMIO. He was previously CMIO at the seven-hospital Carilion Clinic system in Roanoke, Va., where he oversaw an enterprisewide EHR implementation as vice president of informatics.

Donald Levick, MD. CMIO of Lehigh Valley Health Network (Allentown, Pa.). Unlike many other CMIOs, Dr. Levick has avoided moving his health system onto a single IT platform, preferring best-of-breed solutions and combining products to make the optimal infrastructure for LVHN's specific needs. It's worked — In May, the health system was recognized with HIMSS Analytics' stage 6 award. Dr. Levick is also on the board of the Pennsylvania e-Health Initiative, an advocacy group, and the Delaware Valley chapter of HIMSS.

CT Lin, MD, University of Colorado Hospital (Aurora). Dr. Lin has been the CMIO of the University of Colorado Health system since July 2012. He previously served in the same position for the University of Colorado Hospital for 17 years. He has received several national honors during his tenure including being named a Healthcare IT innovator, and an electronic physician of the year. A presentation he gave on improving electronic healthcare readability was awarded an Epic Classics recognition.

Davin Lundquist, MD, Dignity Health (San Francisco). Dr. Lundquist has been CMIO of Dignity Health since July 2013. One of his most interesting projects has been incorporating Google Glass into patient care using an app from Augmedix that puts information pulled from the video stream of a patient encounter directly into the EHR, allowing physicians to keep their attention on patients. He also works to engage the system's affiliated physicians with Dignity Health's IT efforts, including a health information exchange that currently has 7,000 physician members.

Arun Mathews, MD, Medical Center Hospital (Odessa, Texas). Under Dr. Mathews' leadership, the 400-bed regional referral center has attested to meaningful use stage 1, is on track for stage 2 and has reached stage 6 on HIMSS Analytics' EMR Adoption Model. In addition to his CMIO duties, Dr. Mathews is also a clinical assistant professor and hospitalist fellowship training program director for the Texas Tech Department of Family and Community Medicine. Dr. Mathews became the Chief Medical Office - Acute in August 2015. He now holds both positions.

Troy McGuire, MD, Seattle Children's Hospital. Dr. McGuire, a practicing pediatrician, has been with Seattle Children's since 2011. During his tenure he has focused on improving both the safety and efficiency of care within the large, tertiary organization. In January, he was named a finalist for AMIA Provider Innovation in Informatics Award for a system that uses real-time data to reduce emergency department length of stay by identifying safety risks and using real-time data to adjust throughput as necessary.

Dawn Milliner, MD, Mayo Clinic (Rochester, Minn.). Dr. Milliner became the CMIO in late 2011, at a time when she said the Mayo Clinic was entering into an era of knowledge-driven decisions. Since accepting the position, Dr. Milliner began implementing a knowledge content management system. The KCMS system will serve as the central repository of knowledgeable assets for the clinic. Another passion of Dr. Millner's is informatics. She believes that information systems provide a safety net that help to safeguard patients in more ways than an individual can.

Keith Moss, MD, Riverside Healthcare (Kankakee, Ill.). Dr. Moss is the CMO and CMIO at Riverside Healthcare. He stepped into the position in 2015 after serving as the VP and CMIO. During his tenue, Riverside implemented Epic Systems throughout its organization in 2016. Early reviews from Epic are that the hospital has had a positive experience. In addition to his administrative duties. Dr. Moss has a long-standing practice in Bourbonnais, Ill., and he is a fellow of the American College of Physicians.

Dennis R. Niess, MD, Wheeling (W.Va.) Hospital. Dr. Neiss has been Wheeling Hospital's CMIO since 2009. Board-certified in family medicine, Dr. Neiss is respected for his ability to work with physicians from disparate specialties. His excellent rapport with clinicians has allowed him to modify the hospital's EMR system in a way that improves physician workflow while also improving quality measures and patient outcomes.

Michael Oppenheim, MD, Northwell Health (Great Neck, N.Y.). Dr. Oppenheim is the vice president and CMIO at Northwell Health. Northwell He is responsible for overseeing the clinical aspects of electronic medical record rollout and optimization as well as aligning clinical IT efforts with Health System strategic clinical initiatives and priorities. His job additionally has a special focus on decision support, interoperability, and data warehousing/clinical analytics. In 2010 he won an award from the Association of Medical Directors of Information Systems, recognizing his excellence in the field of applied medical informatics.

Eric Poon, MD, MPH, Duke University Health System (Durham, N.C.). From September 2012 to December 2014, Dr. Poon was Vice President and CMIO at Boston Medical Center. From 2007 to 2012, he was the director of clinical informatics and information systems at Brigham and Women's Hospital, also in Boston. Dr. Poon also is an associate professor of medicine at Boston University School of Medicine and previously held the same position at Harvard Medical School. Dr. Poon is board-certified in internal medicine.

Luis Saldaña, MD, Texas Health Resources (Arlington). Dr. Saldaña was promoted from associate CMIO of Texas Health Resources to CMIO in August 2013. He is an expert on clinical decision support implementation, and was a co-author of "Improving Outcomes with Clinical Decision Support," which won HIMSS' annual Book of the Year Award in 2012.

Joseph Schneider, MD, Indian University Health. Dr. Schneider was the Vice President and CMIO of Baylor Scott & White Health up until September 2015. Before Baylor, he was CMIO at Children's Medical Center in Dallas. He is also a former chair of the Executive Committee of the American Academy of Pediatrics Council on Clinical IT, where he helped to lead the development of the Continuity of Care Record Standard, still widely used today. He is a clinical assistant professor at the University of Texas - Southwestern.

Christopher Sharp, MD, Stanford Health Care-Stanford (Calif.). Dr. Sharp has been the CMIO for Stanford Health Care since 2013. His clinical focus is in medical informatics and internal medicine. Before accepting the administrative position he served as the associate chief medical information officer and the medical director for clinical informatics. He earned his board certification in clinical informatics in 2014 by the American Board of Preventive Medicine. Dr. Sharp helps run the Arbor Free Clinic in Menlo Park, Calif. There he helps educate and care for underserved patients.

Dirk Stanley, MD, UConn Health (Farmington, Conn.). Dr. Stanley is the CMIO of UConn Health. He accepted the position in May 2016, after an eight year tenure at Cooley Dickinson Hospital in the same position. At UConn Dr. Stanley is using information to help guide clinical technology, informatics and HealthIT development. He was named Clinician of the Year in 2010 by the New England chapter of HIMSS.

Andy Steele, MD, Denver Health. Dr. Steele is the CMIO of Denver Health. After more than 14 years as Denver Health's director of medical informatics, Dr. Steele was promoted to CMIO in February 2014. In the position his focus is on designing, implementing and enhancing electronic health records. He has 17 years of experience using health information technology.

Paul Testa, MD, NYU Langone Medical Center. Dr. Testa has been the CMIO at NYU Langone since October 2014. He also directs NYU Langone Health System’s telemedicine initiatives, and is an assistant professor in the Ronald O. Perelman Department of Emergency Medicine at NYU Langone. Dr. Testa, who is also an attorney, has published about and lectures on the intersection of public health law and clinical informatics. In 2016, NYU Langone and its ambulatory practices were awarded HIMSS Analytics’ Stage 7 Awards for both Acute Care and Ambulatory — the first hospital enterprise in New York State to receive these prestigious awards.

David Yut-Chee Ting, MD, Massachusetts General Hospital. Dr. Ting's tenure began when he was the associate medical director for information systems in 2010. He was promoted to CMIO in 2014. Dr. Ting earned his medical degree from Duke University, and then completed an internal medicine and pediatrics residency at the Harvard Combined Medicine-Pediatrics program at Massachusetts General. Dr. Ting is an advocate for continued innovation, and encourages informatic teams at MGH to collaborate between their departments in efforts to reap the most benefit.

Vinay Vaidya, MD, Phoenix Children’s Hospital. Dr.Vaidya first started as the CMIO of Phoenix Children's in 2009. During his tenure, he has worked to develop medical informatic systems for pediatrics. The idea that his work on informatics can help to effect a much broader patient base is what drives him throughout his career. He has a patent on a system that presents critical patient information without human interaction.

Robert Warren, MD, PhD, MPH, Medical University of South Carolina (Charleston). CMIO since 2011, Dr. Warren oversaw major EHR upgrades across the four-hospital system and orchestrated a successful "big bang" go live of new enterprisewide patient access, revenue cycle, inpatient clinical systems and analytics and research systems all in July 2014. Dr. Warren is board-certified in pediatrics, allergy and immunology and internal medicine with a specialty in rheumatology.

Lynn Witherspoon, MD, Ochsner Health System (New Orleans). Dr. Witherspoon has been CMIO of Oschner Health System since 2009. He is the leader of several innovative, patient-centered projects, including O Bar, which helps patients download appropriate health-related apps that will eventually be able to send data to the health system's EHR, and a robust disease registry tool that gives providers across the continuum a more comprehensive view of a patient's history.

Sajjad Yacoob, MD, Children's Hospital Los Angeles. After six years as the director of medical informatics at Children's Hospital Los Angeles, Dr. Yacoob became the hospital's first CMIO in 2007. His tenure has been marked by efforts to bring more clinical information to the point of care. Dr. Yacoob is also the assistant dean for innovation and technology and the assistant dean for student affairs at the University of Southern California Keck School of Medicine in Los Angeles.

 

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