Innovation advocate nominated to top spot at CMS

 

 

WASHINGTON — President Barack Obama has nominated Andy Slavitt to serve as administrator of the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, Department of Health and Human Services. 

 

Slavitt is currently CMS’ principal deputy administrator, a position he has held since July 2014, and has served as acting administrator of CMS since March.  

 

According to a recent Bloomberg report, Sen. Orrin Hatch, R-Utah, suggested Slavitt may face some scrutiny in the Senate. “Mr. Slavitt’s conflicted history in the medical services industry has produced mixed results and raised a number of serious concerns,” Hatch said. “Slavitt will need to answer a number of tough questions regarding his former employer and their relationship with the agency.” 

 

Slavitt opened up CMS data to access by business, which was previously only granted to researchers, during last month's Health Datapalooza 2015, where he was a keynote speaker.

 

“The opportunity for significant improvement in healthcare is ripe,” he said, as part of his participation in the video above. “It means we must become an information industry and focus on these four critical basics: privacy and security, real consumer benefit, learning and productivity and connectivity. It demands a great deal more from all of us, but represents unprecedented opportunity to bring better care to people.”

 

From 2012 to 2014, he served as group EVP for Optum, a clinical, technological and operational solutions focused subsidiary of UnitedHealth Group. As part of that work, Slavitt was a key member of the team brought on to turn around HealthCare.gov during the first open enrollment period. From 2005 to 2012, he was part of senior leadership at Inginex, now Optum Insight, serving as COO from 2005 to 2006 and as CEO from 2006 to 2012.  

 

Slavitt was CEO of the Consumer Solutions Group at UnitedHealth Group from 2004 to 2005. From 1999 to 2004, he served as CEO of HealthAllies, an online healthcare shopping company he founded. Slavitt was COO of Paula Financial from 1995 to 1999 and was an associate at McKinsey & Company from 1993 to 1995. He began his career as an investment banking financial analyst at Goldman Sachs. 

 

Slavitt received a B.A. and B.S. from the University of Pennsylvania and an M.B.A. from Harvard Business School.