Networking News

ONC Chief Likely to Become Assistant Secretary for Health

By Kyle Murphy, PhD

- One of the country's chief architect for healthcare interoperability will likely to changing roles.

Karen DeSalvo is likely to step down as National Coordinator to become Assistant Secretary for Health at HHS.

In an official statement on Tuesday, President Barack Obama nominated the head of the Office of the National Coordinator for Health Information Technology Karen DeSalvo, MD, MPH, MSc, to the position of Assistant Secretary for Health in the Department of Health & Human Services (HHS).

If confirmed by the United States Senate, DeSalvo would step down as National Coordinator to fill the position she has filled temporarily as Acting Assistant Secretary since being tapped by Secretary Sylvia M. Burwell to help guide the country's response to Ebola.

In an internal email to HHS staff on Wednesday, the Secretary explained how the nomination will impact DeSalvo's day-to-day activities as she awaits confirmation:

Karen's nomination now goes to the Senate for confirmation. As the Senate process moves forward, Karen will serve again as the Acting Assistant Secretary for Health. At the same time, as her confirmation is pending, she will continue to serve as the National Coordinator for Health Information Technology. Please join me in congratulating Karen, and wishing her the best as the confirmation process begins.

Secretary Burwell also detailed the current National Coordinator's swift rise from her former position as the Health Commissioner of the City of New Orleans to Acting Assistant Secretary:

Karen came to the Department in January of 2014 after serving as the Health Commissioner for the City of New Orleans and Senior Health Policy Advisor to Mayor Mitch Landrieu. In this role, she worked to improve the health and well-being of the community through ensuring an effective healthcare system, and supporting efforts to integrate clinical medicine and public health initiatives. During her tenure, she led a transformation of the health department into a nationally recognized model…Prior to her work with the city, she was Vice Dean for Community Affairs and Health Policy at the Tulane School of Medicine and also on faculty at the Tulane School of Public Health. Throughout her career, Karen has been devoted to improving health outcomes broadly and has focused, in particular, on vulnerable and low resource populations.

 As the National Coordinator for Health Information Technology here at HHS, Karen has promoted and expanded the utilization of electronic health records in health care. She led the development of an interoperability roadmap to increase communication between electronic health record systems, while at the same time providing patients more access to their health data while protecting their privacy. She has also sought to harness the power of electronic health records to improve the health care delivery system in the United States and has been an active leader on the Department's delivery system reform initiatives. Karen more recently served as Acting Assistant Secretary for Health, and has been an integral part of the Department's work on the response to the Ebola crisis as well.

Since assuming the role of National Coordinator in December 2013, DeSalvo championed interoperable health IT and the federal agency's aim to promote a health IT infrastructure capable of supporting a learning health system. In January 2015, ONC released the first draft of its shared nationwide interoperability roadmap, the ten-year plan to achieve healthcare interoperability in the US.

DeSalvo's departure would not necessarily change this plan, but it would leave federal agency without a key voice in the public dialogue about healthcare interoperability.