Duties
As the senior expert in nursing informatics and inter-professional use of health information technology (IT), the Chief Nursing Informatics Officer (CNIO) serves as the primary advisor to nursing leadership and other key officials to achieve standardization of best practices across facilities in alignment with High Reliability Organization (HRO) principles. The CNIO is expected to be a leader for change and must demonstrate an ability for inter-professional collaboration. The CNIO at the VISN 19 VA Rocky Mountain Network is part of a nationwide Veterans Health Administration (VHA) team charged with actively and vocally supporting a successful national informatics infrastructure for VHA and advancing national strategies for managing workflow and knowledge in clinical systems utilized by nursing staff. The VISN 19 VA Rocky Mountain Network CNIO participates in VA Central Office activities to ensure that nursing informatics is established as a professional domain in VHA, and that best practices are identified, developed, and disseminated throughout the VHA health care system. The CNIO demonstrates transformational leadership skills, characterized by substantial and continuous responsibility and accountability, for an integrated inter-professional program that contributes to a complex healthcare system through documented outcome measurement.
The CNIO is responsible for providing VISN leadership in the development and use of informatics solutions and technology to support all nursing domains within an inter-professional methodology. Responsibilities include, but are not limited to, the oversight of nursing informatics practice, by establishing effective and efficient clinical and administrative systems, designing meaningful decision support systems, managing calculated risks and associated mitigation strategies, and fostering lifelong nursing informatics domain knowledge and information that supports evidence-based practice, quality improvements and research. This position provides leadership in designated projects and cross-coverage with other informaticists in the Department of Veterans Affairs (VA). The complexity of responsibilities is significant and supports the principles of a continuous learning health system. The CNIO fosters leadership and professionalism by providing communication that supports building internal and external agency coalitions creates alignments for nursing informatics best practices and leads clinical and health informatics initiatives and innovation across the enterprise. Position responsibilities include leadership activities such as implementation, evaluation, monitoring and analyzing clinical and health processes to identify strategies to advance health data and health information systems to improve outcomes and support innovation.
