CIO departs CMS; health exchange turmoil continues

The chief information officer of the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services has resigned following a month of turbulence over the flawed rollout of the healthcare marketplace and the revamped HealthCare.gov website.

Tony Trenkle, who has been with the agency since 2005, announced his resignation Wednesday in a staff email, saying he would be shifting to the private sector, effective Nov. 15. Dave Nelson, director of enterprise management, will become acting CIO.

CMS’ communications office would not say whether Trenkle’s departure is related to the HealthCare.gov site, but many of the site’s glitches may stem from poor planning and website development rather than in the IT security arena.

Due to delays in the site’s development, Trenkle and his staff were still assessing the security of the new insurance exchange system just days before its launch, noted the Washington Post. The Office of Inspector General had warned CMS in an August report that many security assessment tasks still needed to be completed before the scheduled October 1 rollout, including several stages of security control assessments whose summer 2013 deadlines kept being pushed back. The resulting delays meant that the crucial security authorization would not be obtained until September 30, far too late for the site to be thoroughly tested, the report noted.

During Trenkle’s tenure as director of information services and later as CIO, he played a key role in developing the Meaningful Use Stage 1 rule and served on the Health IT Policy Committee, an advisory group for the Office of the National Coordinator for Health IT.

Pamela Tabar

Pamela Tabar was editor-in-chief of I Advance Senior Care from 2013-2018. She has worked as a writer and editor for healthcare business media since 1998, including as News Editor of Healthcare Informatics. She has a master’s degree in journalism from Kent State University and a master’s degree in English from the University of York, England.