Tavenner leaving CMS
The nurse turned hospital executive turned chief federal healthcare regulator is leaving the government. Now the industry is left wondering: Who will take the reigns in the Obama Administration's pivotal fourth quarter?
Marilyn Tavenner, the administrator of the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services since 2010, is leaving the agency in February. The Huffington Post first reported the news.
Tavenner's tenure was marked notably by the disastrous launch of the health insurance exchanges in October 2013, but also by the implementation of key Affordable Care Act policies covering insurance markets, hospital reimbursements, quality transparency initiatives, and state Medicaid waivers.
She is expected to be replaced by CMS's second-ranking official Andrew Slavitt, a former UnitedHealth/Optum executive who will take over as acting administrator.
Health and Human Services Secretary Sylvia Mathews Burwell praised Tavenner's work in times of change.
"Marilyn delivered historic results at the helm of CMS," Burwell wrote in an email to HHS staff. "Under her watch, the solvency of the Medicare Trust Funds was extended to 2030. In addition, her work on healt care quality helped our nation achieve a 17 percent reduction in hospital acquired conditions, saving an estimated 50,000 lives and $12 billion in healthcare costs."
Tavenner became CMS administrator after Obama's first appointee, Harvard Medical School professor and single payer advocate Donald Berwick, MD, was deemed too radical to get confirmed by the Senate. Tavenner, on the other hand, had both public and private sector credentials that won her overwhelming.
In 1981, Tavenner started her career as a nurse at Johnston-Willis Hospital in Richmond, Virginia, and quickly climbed up the latter at its parent company, Hospital Corporation of America. In 1993, Tavenner become CEO of Johnston-Willis, then president of HCA's central Atlantic operations in 2001 and eventually group president of outpatient services. In 2005, she left HCA to work as Virginia's Health and Human Resources Secretary, under Governor Tim Kaine.
