CEO Executive AssistantHealth information technology coordination has become one of the most strategically significant and operationally complex functions a healthcare CEO oversees. EHR governance, interoperability compliance, information blocking rule adherence, cybersecurity posture, and large-scale health IT vendor relationships all require disciplined executive engagement. The CEO who is not well-organized in this domain risks both regulatory exposure and the operational disruptions that poorly managed health IT transitions create across clinical and administrative operations.
The executive assistant who supports health information technology coordination is managing a function where the stakes include both federal regulatory compliance and patient safety. Scheduling EHR governance committee meetings, coordinating interoperability compliance reviews, tracking ONC and CMS reporting obligations, managing health IT vendor briefings, and preparing board presentations on HIT investment performance all require an EA who understands the regulatory landscape, the internal governance structure, and the CEO’s role in providing strategic direction to a complex technical domain. This article explains how skilled admin support professionals handle each component of this function.
Why Health Information Technology Coordination Requires Dedicated Admin Support
Health information technology sits at the intersection of clinical operations, regulatory compliance, patient privacy, and capital investment. EHR systems are among the largest IT investments a health system makes, and the ongoing governance of those systems, including upgrade decisions, interface management, training investments, and vendor contract negotiations, requires sustained executive attention. At the same time, the federal regulatory environment around health IT has grown significantly more demanding.
The ONC information blocking rules, which took effect under the 21st Century Cures Act, impose substantive requirements on health systems regarding patient data access and interoperability. CMS has parallel requirements around data sharing and interoperability for Medicare and Medicaid participants. Non-compliance carries both financial penalties and reputational risks. For a CEO overseeing a large health system, knowing that these compliance obligations are being tracked with precision and that the right governance structures are in place requires administrative infrastructure that connects the CEO to the technical and compliance teams managing these issues.
The CEO’s role is not to manage the EHR system or the compliance program directly. It is to ensure that the governance structures are functioning, that significant decisions and risks are escalating appropriately, and that the board is informed about the health system’s HIT investment performance and risk posture. The EA’s role is to build the scheduling and briefing infrastructure that makes that level of engagement possible.
Scheduling EHR Governance Committee Meetings
EHR governance committees provide the formal decision-making structure for a health system’s electronic health record strategy: version upgrades, module additions, major workflow changes, interface investments, and training program decisions all flow through governance before implementation. In most large health systems, the CEO does not chair the EHR governance committee but does receive regular reports from it and is engaged when governance decisions have material financial or strategic implications.
The EA maintains the CEO’s EHR governance engagement calendar, which includes: quarterly briefings with the EHR governance committee chair or the CMIO and CHIO on committee activity and upcoming decisions, an annual strategic review at which the CEO receives a comprehensive update on EHR performance, planned investments, and the three-year roadmap, and ad-hoc escalation meetings when governance decisions require CEO-level input or approval.
For the quarterly briefings, the EA coordinates with the governance committee staff to obtain a summary of recent committee decisions and upcoming agenda items, along with any issues that the CMIO or CHIO believes require CEO visibility. This summary becomes the basis for the pre-meeting briefing note the EA prepares for the CEO, covering the key decisions made since the last briefing, any significant upcoming decisions on the governance agenda, and any operational issues that have arisen from recent EHR changes.
When a governance decision requires a capital commitment that exceeds the committee’s delegated authority, the EA coordinates with the CFO’s team to ensure the appropriate financial analysis is prepared and the CEO review and approval process is completed before the governance timeline requires a decision. Capital decisions in health IT are often time-sensitive due to vendor contract windows and implementation scheduling constraints, and the EA needs to build backward from those constraints to ensure the CEO review process has adequate lead time.
Coordinating Interoperability Compliance Reviews
Interoperability compliance is a continuing obligation for health systems under ONC and CMS rules. The core requirements include: supporting standardized APIs for patient data access, ensuring that EHR systems can exchange data with other systems using required standards (including FHIR-based APIs), and documenting compliance with the information blocking prohibitions that restrict health systems from taking actions that interfere with patient access to their health information.
The CEO’s involvement in interoperability compliance is primarily governance-level: receiving regular status reports on the health system’s compliance posture, approving remediation plans when compliance gaps are identified, and being briefed before any regulatory examination or audit that may include assessment of information blocking compliance.
The EA maintains an interoperability compliance review calendar that captures: the dates for regular compliance status reports from the health informatics and compliance teams, any scheduled regulatory examinations or certification reviews involving HIT systems, and the dates for planned interoperability improvements and their associated go-live milestones. This calendar is coordinated with the CHIO, the compliance team, and the EHR vendor management team.
When the compliance review identifies a gap or a developing risk, the EA coordinates the CEO briefing process. The briefing should come from the CHIO and the compliance officer jointly, covering the nature of the gap, the regulatory exposure if not remediated, the proposed remediation plan and timeline, and the resources required. The CEO’s role in this briefing is to ask the strategic questions that clarify whether the remediation plan is adequate and to approve any resource commitments the remediation requires.
Regulatory filing support is a closely related function that covers the broader landscape of regulatory reporting obligations, including those that intersect with health IT compliance reporting.
Tracking ONC and CMS Information Blocking Rule Reporting
The ONC information blocking rules and CMS interoperability requirements each carry their own reporting and attestation obligations. Health systems must maintain documentation of their compliance with information blocking exceptions, report complaints or inquiries through appropriate channels, and in some cases attest to compliance as part of Medicare program participation requirements.
The EA maintains a regulatory reporting tracker that captures all ONC and CMS HIT-related reporting obligations, their due dates, the internal owner responsible for completing each submission, and the CEO’s role in the process if any (most submissions are completed at the compliance or informatics level, but some require CEO awareness or approval of the submission content).
This tracker is reviewed monthly with the compliance team and the CHIO to confirm that upcoming deadlines are being managed and to surface any issues that may require CEO attention. The EA also monitors the ONC and CMS regulatory calendars for new reporting requirements or changes to existing obligations and coordinates with the compliance team to update the tracker when new requirements are identified.
For any reporting obligation that requires CEO sign-off or involvement, the EA builds the preparation schedule backward from the due date to ensure the CEO receives draft materials for review with adequate time to make changes before the submission deadline. Health IT regulatory reporting submissions that require executive certification carry the same legal weight as other regulatory filings, and the preparation process must reflect that significance.
Managing Health IT Vendor Briefings
Large health systems work with multiple health IT vendors simultaneously: EHR platform vendors such as Epic or Oracle Health, specialty application vendors for radiology, pharmacy, laboratory, and other clinical departments, interoperability platform vendors, cybersecurity vendors, and data analytics partners. The CEO’s engagement with these vendors is selective, focused on the most strategically significant relationships and the most material contract and performance issues.
The EA maintains a health IT vendor engagement calendar that captures: the dates for annual or semi-annual strategic relationship reviews with the major EHR platform vendor, quarterly performance reviews with any vendor whose contract includes performance metrics or SLAs that are not being consistently met, and ad-hoc CEO briefings when a vendor relationship requires executive-level attention due to a contract negotiation, a significant service failure, or a strategic development (such as a vendor acquisition or product discontinuation) that affects the health system.
Vendor briefings for the CEO should be prepared with the IT leadership team and the vendor management team, covering the vendor relationship’s current status, any performance concerns or contract issues, the upcoming contract renewal timeline if applicable, and any strategic developments in the vendor’s product roadmap that may affect the health system’s plans. The EA coordinates the collection of these inputs and assembles them into the pre-briefing materials the CEO reviews before each vendor engagement.
For annual strategic relationship reviews with the EHR platform vendor, the CEO’s engagement is typically part of a broader executive relationship meeting that includes the health system’s CIO and CMIO alongside senior executives from the vendor. The EA coordinates the logistics for these sessions, which often include site visits, product demonstrations, and roadmap discussions in addition to formal relationship review conversations.
Preparing Board Presentations on HIT Investment Performance and Patient Data Security
The board’s oversight of health IT investment requires regular updates that address two distinct dimensions: the performance and value of the health system’s HIT investments, and the security posture around patient data. These are often presented together as part of a broader technology governance update, or separately when the board’s risk committee has specific oversight responsibility for cybersecurity.
A board presentation on HIT investment performance covers: the total investment in HIT across the capital and operating budget, the operational performance of core systems including EHR uptime, user satisfaction, and clinical workflow metrics, the status of any major implementation or upgrade projects underway, the interoperability compliance posture and any outstanding compliance gaps, and the strategic roadmap for HIT investment over the next two to three years.
The patient data security component covers: the health system’s current cybersecurity posture as assessed by the CISO, any significant security incidents during the reporting period and their resolution, the results of external security assessments or penetration tests, the status of HIPAA security rule compliance, and any emerging threats or regulatory developments that affect the health system’s security strategy.
Board reporting support provides the overall framework for managing CEO-to-board communications across all healthcare governance domains, including health IT oversight.
McKinsey research on digital health transformation identifies effective health IT governance and interoperability as critical enablers of value-based care models and operational efficiency. The administrative infrastructure supporting CEO engagement in health IT governance is not a supporting function. It is a component of the system that determines whether health IT investments deliver their intended value.
The Standard for Health Information Technology Coordination
Health information technology coordination requires an EA who understands the regulatory obligations that govern health IT, the governance structures through which major HIT decisions are made, the vendor relationships that are most strategically significant, and the board oversight expectations for both investment performance and patient data security.
The scheduling and tracking work in this function is deadline-driven and compliance-sensitive. The briefing coordination requires close collaboration with the CHIO, CMIO, compliance team, and IT leadership to ensure the CEO receives materials that enable informed strategic engagement rather than technical immersion. The board presentation coordination brings together investment, operational, and security dimensions into a coherent governance narrative.
Healthcare CEOs who have this level of administrative support in their health information technology oversight function are better positioned to fulfill their governance responsibilities, better protected against regulatory exposure from compliance gaps, and better prepared to make the strategic and capital decisions that determine whether their health system’s HIT investments drive clinical and operational performance.