We asked respondents to identify the distribution of their total work effort and the distribution of work related specifically to their CMO duties; 149 responded to this question. Overall work effort, in order of decreasing frequency, was distributed among CMO duties (72%), personal clinical practice (13%), other administrative duties (7%), teaching (5%), research (2%), and other (1%). We evaluated the breadth of work effort by determining the percentage of respondents who spent at least some time in various other activities in addition to their CMO duties. Seventy-seven percent of CMOs reported that they participated in some clinical practice. Participation rates in other areas were teaching (64%), other administrative duties (39%), research (20%), and other duties (6%).
Within the subset of CMO duties (72% of total effort), effort was distributed among clinical quality and patient safety (31%), coordination of inpatient and outpatient clinical operations (21%), other (16%), graduate medical education (GME) (9%), risk management (7%), clinical information systems (6%), public relations (4%), professional liability (4%), and nursing services (2%). As with total work effort, we depicted the breadth of CMO duties by identifying the percentage of CMOs who reported at least some effort in the following activities: clinical quality (91%), patient safety (84%), risk management (76%), GME (70%), inpatient services (67%), outpatient services (65%) clinical information systems (63%), professional liability (61%), public relations (55%), other (48%), and nursing services (26%).