President Barack Obama re-nominated Marilyn Tavenner to be permanent administrator for the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services. She has been serving as acting administrator since December 2011, when Donald Berwick, MD, stepped down.

The Federation of American Hospitals is urging the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) to avoid duplicative quality reporting programs as the agency works to determine how best to use EHRs to support the Hospital Inpatient Quality Reporting Program.

The director of the American Healthcare Research and Quality (AHRQ), Carolyn M. Clancy, MD, is planning to step down later this year after a decade leading the agency.

The Joint Commission has appointed Daniel J. Castillo, MD, as the medical director in the division of healthcare quality evaluation, for which he will lead clinical, research and patient safety issues.

Among other efforts and on the heels of the release of the final privacy rule, the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) has released its final rule seeking to increase public awareness of financial relationships between drug and device manufacturers and certain healthcare providers.

The Healthcare Information and Management Systems Society (HIMSS) is supporting much of the Office of the National Coordinator for Health IT’s proposed HIT safety plan, but its comment letter offers additional ideas to enhance or clarify some of the provisions.

The American Hospital Association (AHA) has issued a letter to the Office of the National Coordinator for Health IT (ONC) to congratulate the agency on its patient safety action plan that recognizes the shared responsibility of vendors, clinicians, providers and federal agencies in ensuring that health IT systems are designed, implemented and used to mitigate harm and promote safety. However, the association also encouraged more focus on a single, national master patient index (MPI).

The Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) will develop a new records system to facilitate quality reporting for long-term hospital care, according to a posting Feb. 6 in the Federal Register.