DeSalvo exits top health IT post to focus on Ebola

Dr. Karen DeSalvo, national coordinator for health information technology at HHS, is leaving that position to become acting assistant secretary of health, effective immediately, the Office of the National Coordinator for Health Information Technology confirmed Thursday. Her departure set off speculation about who might succeed her.

Lisa Lewis, the ONC’s chief operating officer, now will serve as the acting national coordinator at ONC. Lewis is the first nonphysician to lead the ONC, albeit on an acting basis.

Lewis, a lawyer, has been with the ONC since March 2010. She served for five months as acting principal deputy national coordinator this year. During her first three years at ONC, she served as chief grants management officer.

Also leaving is the agency’s No. 2, Deputy National Coordinator Dr. Jacob Reider, a three-year veteran at the ONC, who said in his own message to ONC staff that he had coordinated his announcement with DeSalvo.

“I have been commuting to D.C. from my home in Albany, N.Y., and committed to my family that three years would be the limit of such an arrangement,” he said. Reider said he won’t be leaving until November.

In her new position, DeSalvo will become part of the administration’s Ebola response efforts.