”The roles and responsibilities of the two positions made working together difficult in the past,” John Byrnes, M.D., a board member of the Healthcare Financial Management Association and founder of the Byrnes Medical Group, told the news service.
“CMOs generally don’t have a business background, so they speak a different language than the CFO and vice-versa,” noted Dr. Byrnes, the former CMO of SCL Health, in Denver.
The disconnect includes building design. “You don’t really find finance offices close to clinical care, patient care areas,” he said.
But with the Affordable Care Act, Dr. Byrnes says, “CFOs are starting to realize that any improvement in care that the chief medical officer can drive through the organization also has significant financial benefits because more often than not it will remove some of the unnecessary costs in patient care out of the organization.”
Finding common ground benefits both the clinical and the financial sectors because it bridges the goals of lower costs and improved patient outcomes.
