Blumenthal told his staff in a memo Feb. 3 that he will return to Harvard University, where he was a researcher before President Obama named him to head the Office of the National Coordinator for Health IT in March 2009.
Blumenthal had planned to stay two years when he accepted the position with ONC, he said in the memo.
Blumenthal has steered the development of criteria for meaningful use of EHRs in collaboration with the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services and public and private partnerships to nudge providers away from paper to digital records, and then to use them in a way that will help to improve the quality of health care.
“We have been privileged to be at the center of a great new enterprise at an historic moment in our health care system,” he said. “For years, America’s health policy leaders have understood that information technology offered the opportunity for transformational improvement of the Nation’s health care system and the health of individual Americans.”
David Blumenthal to Step Down
Comments