Seema Verma, Administrator of the federal Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, announced via a staff memo on Tuesday that she had appointed a new Chief Healthcare Informatics Officer in the Office of the Administrator. That new CHIO, Dr. Mark Roche, is a physician informaticist who had previously served as a physician advisor in the Office of the National Coordinator (ONC), another agency within the Department of Health and Human Services.
In her announcement to CMS staff on March 5, Administrator Verma wrote, “Colleagues, I am pleased to share with you several staff additions and changes that together will help CMS deliver on its strategic initiatives. Dr. Mark Roche also began this week as the new Chief Healthcare Informatics Officer in the Office of the Administrator. In this role, he will be responsible for helping formulate and implement the clinical and technical aspects of CMS’ interoperability strategy and MyHealthEData initiative. Mark is a physician informaticist with over 16 years of experience working in government, academic and industry sectors on initiatives such as national eHealth strategy, data modeling and semantic interoperability. He formerly served as a physician advisor to the Office of the National Coordinator (ONC) for Health IT where he led the design of U.S. Interoperability Roadmap, and developed components for 2015 E-Certification Rule and electronic Clinical Quality Measures (eCQMs) in support of CMS’ Meaningful Use Stage 3 program (Promoting Interoperability program).”
Further, Verma wrote, “Prior to ONC, Mark worked at the U.S. National Cancer Institute and at Northwestern University as Adjunct Professor for Master of Science in Medical Informatics program. Mark completed his Medical Doctor (MD) degree at the University of Vienna, Master of Science in Medical Informatics degree at Northwestern University, and post-doctoral training in Bioinformatics and IT at the National Institutes of Health.”
In sharing Administrator Verma’s announcement to CMS staff with the press, a CMS media spokesperson referred members of the press to a blog that Verma had written on July 19, 2018, in which she shared her vision for the position. In that blog, Verma had written, “Through MyHealthEData, CMS envisions a future in which all patients have access to their own health data and use it to make the right decisions for themselves and to get the best value. We see health IT systems that work seamlessly with each other, and a government that supports secure data sharing and emerging technologies so that healthcare in America is better and less expensive.”
What’s more, Verma wrote in that July 2018 blog, “To achieve these goals, CMS fully acknowledges that we cannot operate in a ‘way-we-have-always-done-it’ manner and hope for different results. That is why CMS created the new role of CMS Chief Health Informatics Officer (CHIO) and has begun the process of filling this new role with a leading healthcare IT talent. The CHIO will drive health IT and data sharing to enhance healthcare delivery, improve health outcomes, drive down costs, and empower patients. Through this new function, CMS will effectively engage stakeholders from all parts of the healthcare market, including our Federal partners and industry leaders.”
According to his LinkedIn profile, Dr. Roche did postdoctoral research in bioinformatics and information technology at the National Institutes of health from October 2001 through July 2004; served as an adjunct professor at Northwestern University, in the medical informatics area, from October 2009 through May 2011; served as a physician advisor at ONC from October 2012 through April 2016; served as a co-chair at Health Level Seven International from May 2015 through May 2017; served as a physician advisor at HHS from October 2016 through February 2019; and joined CMS in March 2019.
