Lisa Shah started telling people she wanted to be a doctor at age 6.
She went straight from premed to medical school to her residency at the University of Chicago.
Losing patients also deeply affected her.
Healthcare companies have long employed chief medical officers or chief health officers to oversee clinical controls.
TheCOVID-19 pandemicleft doctors overworked, underappreciated, and constantly exposed to new workplace hazards.
The World Health Organization estimated that tens of thousands of health workers died globally in 2020 and 2021.
Today’s physicians have been “pushed,” says Myers, “to think about different options.”
“No one gets into medicine to be an administrator,” says Dr.
But the starkly inequitable healthcare system at times left him feeling helpless.
He says patients have told him they could afford medication or food but not both.
He had no board certification related to pathology or laboratory science.
“People trust their doctors to have their best interest in mind” over a CEO.
It’s hard to quantify the rise of the CMO.
In 2024, there were 2,154 such job posts.
They might work on product development, research consumer safety, or analyze employee benefits and policies.
Salesforce added a CMOin 2019, whose role focused onemployee well-being.
Google hired its first chief health officer in 2019.
Sclar previously worked in three other CMO roles and was the first hired at each.
Other CMOs agree that there’s a learning curve when moving from the medical world to the business world.
Maytal says his new role has him translating medical jargon and learning business jargon.
“There can be really different end goals when you’re talking about business objectives versus healthcare objectives.”
The rise in CMOs comes as America faces a direshortage of physicians.
“I don’t think it’s a zero-sum game,” says Maytal.
“I knew I wanted to have a higher-level impact on the system.”
Now, more are coming around.
Amanda Hooveris a senior correspondent at Business Insider covering the tech industry.
She writes about the biggest tech companies and trends.
