Job Abstract

Job Summary:

The Chief Nursing Information Officer (CNIO) provides strategic vision and leadership to drive transformation in healthcare delivery using data, information, knowledge, and wisdom in nursing and health professions practice. Serves as the principal informatics advisor to the Chief Nursing Executive. Provides visionary leadership and establishes direction for a comprehensive nursing informatics program, with a primary focus on nursing practice, administration, research, and academic partnership in support of interdisciplinary patient-driven care. Serves as the principal for developing strategic nursing informatics plans, data analysis, and creation of policies and procedures and serves as a champion for complex nursing projects and systems that support efficiency and effectiveness for end users, with the primary goal of advancing nursing's evidence-based practice. Works in tandem with other senior leaders, such as the Chief Nurse Executive, Chief Medical Information Officer, and Chief Information Officer, to drive transformational strategies that meet the needs of diverse, interdisciplinary teams of clinicians and patients, to achieve the vision, goals, and performance of an organization.

Scope: UTMB hospitals and clinics

Essential Job Duties:

• Major focus on supporting the professional practice, clinical operations, quality, and safety needs of nursing, all allied health clinicians and patients, and family caregivers.
• Combines knowledge of patient care, informatics concepts, and change management to effectively address the information and knowledge needs of all healthcare professionals and patients to promote safe, effective, and efficient use of health IT in clinical settings.
• Maintains relationships with key business partners and other senior industry leaders to leverage best practices, evaluate emerging technologies, and distribute knowledge internally to inform plans and strategies.
• Works with vendors to proactively strategize on the development and/or enhancement of clinical information system solutions to meet organizational business needs.
• Develops and maintains productive and collaborative relationships with nurses, physicians, hospital administrators, Information Services leadership, and UTMB School of Nursing to enhance the development of the practice of Nursing Informatics and the improvement and innovation of the application of technology within the practice of Nursing.
• Assesses evolving patient care delivery models, hospital operations, human resource processes, healthcare finance, and payment models impacting the continuum of care and interprets them considering UTMB’s needs and strategic direction.
• Collaborates with nurse leaders in planning and implementing program expansion and growth, including new business ventures, construction, and projects, and real-time health system projects.
• Responsible for ensuring quality improvement efforts are consistent with promoting informatics research, regulatory bodies, and guidelines as well as evidence-based practice that supports positive clinical outcomes.
• Coordinates and collaborates with administrative teams, clinical leaders, information technology, financial services, and quality/regulatory/risk management amongst others in the development and successful implementation of high-quality and innovative clinical information systems that assist the clinician in their delivery of care.
• Ensures coordination and integration of standard of care practices across all clinical departments for quality patient care.
• Acts as a change agent working with nursing and clinical leadership teams in the identification, development, planning, implementation, and measurement of overall informatics strategies to support quality patient care and professional practice.
• Ensures that the environment, technology, and infrastructure are emphasized in the prevention of medical errors and adverse events.
• Continuously collects, analyzes, and reports data in collaboration with quality on patient safety issues and outcomes.
• Works in partnership with information technology (IT) leadership to leverage predictive analytics tools to identify at-risk patients and populations.
• Adheres to internal controls and reporting structure.

Marginal or Periodic Functions:

• Oversees the inter-professional informatics council and ensures stakeholder engagement in decision-making. Acts as a point of contact for application control and change requests.
• Works with clinical and IT leaders in evaluating the effectiveness of technologies and workflows that impact all clinical users.
• Identifies potential clinical risks and reviews clinical incidents associated with the use of information technology and develops and implements mitigations.
• Remains abreast of advances in the areas of emergent healthcare technology and information management systems and anticipates their effect on and translation into nursing practice.
• Promotes advancement of clinical and business intelligence systems capable of reporting variables to evaluate patient outcomes, support research, and operational improvement across the continuum of care.
• Promotes the use of health IT to improve patient safety by designing, developing, implementing, and educating on decision support tools.
• Provides critical analysis and evaluation of health IT and recommends revision of clinical systems, processes, and workflow to ensure achievement of positive patient outcomes.
• Leads Business Continuity Planning and system recovery strategies for Nursing relative to Information Systems downtime.
• Commits to clinical practice, with a designated % of time; or clinical shadowing/rounding.
• Performs related duties as assigned.

Knowledge/Skills/Abilities:

• Prior experience in clinical nursing practice and/or management.
• Working knowledge of federal and state regulations and accrediting bodies (ex. HIPAA, CMS, TJC) that relate to electronic health records, including information systems security and technical requirements that are necessary for compliance with these laws and regulations.
• An understanding of the benefits of information systems that extend beyond the technology to the improvement and re-engineering of clinical processes.
• Clinical and administrative systems implementation and project management experience.
• A deep knowledge of the Epic electronic health record and a vision for its enhancement and optimization.
• Basic knowledge of organizational development, systems, and change theories and statistics.
• Ability to successfully shape and implement a vision for seamless use of informatics approaches within nursing clinical workflows and care delivery models.
• An ability to work independently and within interdisciplinary teams to make effective decisions.
• Strong leadership and management skills.
• A passion for excellence that elevates the abilities and competencies of the various work groups and teams.
• Excellent oral and written communication skills.
• Excellent interpersonal skills, as confirmed by the ability to develop effective relationships with a wide array of people at various levels within as well as external to the organization.

Minimum Qualifications:

Master’s degree (either the Baccalaureate or Master’s degree must be in nursing). Current experience in a progressive academic medical center with a minimum of five years of leadership and large-scale change experience, five (5) years of informatics experience, and five (5) years of clinical experience.

Licenses, Registrations, or Certifications:

Required:

Current license or valid permit to practice professional nursing in Texas.

Current certification in informatics specialty.

Preferred:

ANCC Nursing Informatics preferred, CPHIMS allowed.

Nurse Executive, Advanced certification.