A 2015 HIMSS study found that chief information officers and chief medical information officers believe that they drive their hospital’s patient engagement efforts because it is likely to have a strong technical component. But as Chicago-based HIMSS Executive Vice President Carla Smith noted in a recent interview, clinicians and patients beg to disagree. They see patient engagement as a high-touch thing.
“But the clinicians say the patients need to take more responsibility for outcomes and the patients say the clinicians need to be driving it,” she adds. All three groups see different barriers, according to the survey. Many CIOs say attitudes and expectations of providers and patients are a problem, while providers see time demands and training as barriers, “so we have many steps to walk together to figure this out,” Smith said.
