Third-Party Vendor Risk Management in Healthcare

One of the realities I’ve seen is that the healthcare CIO is largely a vendor manager. I’ve grown that view a bit to include the management of people, but that’s the majority of a CIO’s job. Manage the people that work for the CIO and manage the vendors that work with their organization. This is not a knock on CIOs. This is really important work that they’re doing. Although, it is a recognition that much of the risk they take on as CIO is dependent on the vendors with whom they work. This is true from an innovation perspective where the innovations of the vendor will either make the CIO look really good or really bad. However, it’s also true from a multitude of other financial, legal, security, and reputation standpoint as well.