Dive Brief:
- Healthcare CIOs's top concerns in 2014 are M&A and security, according to Bonnie Siegel, a healthcare IT recruiter for Witt/Kieffer who had several discussions with CIOs at the College of Healthcare Information Management Executives' CIO Forum in Orlando, Fla.
- Healthcare organizations are looking for various ways to work with one another, ranging from shared IT services to clinical arrangements, to out-and-out consolidation.
- Health IT issues are also front of mind. Healthcare CIOs are eager to hire for key IT roles, including chief information security officers, data scientists and analytics experts. CIOs are also worried about the challenge of getting cyber liability insurance to protect them in the event of a breach or hack.
Dive Insight:
This will certainly be a year in which a lot of partnering and consolidation takes place among healthcare organizations -- one CIO called it a feeding frenzy -- bringing lots of changes to the organizations involved. Managing IT in the midst of this environment will be particularly challenging, because the difficulties involved in integrating multiple organizations make it harder to lock down security. Given the added complexities brought to the table by the ACA, this year should offer one heckuva ride.