CMS COO Snyder to step down

Michelle Snyder, CMS chief operating officer, is leaving the agency effective Dec. 31, the CMS confirmed Monday. While one published report tied her leaving to rollout problems with HealthCare.gov, the CMS contends the decision was Snyder's and that she had originally planned to leave in 2012 but stayed on “at my request to help me with the challenges facing CMS in 2013,” said CMS Administrator Marilyn Tavenner in a statement to employees and supplied to Modern Healthcare.

The technology teams that built HealthCare.gov reported to Snyder. She is the third CMS official to leave the agency in recent days. Chief Information Officer Tony Trenkle, also associated with the HealthCare.gov rollout, left in November. Earlier this month, Richard Foster, chief actuary for Medicare, announced his retirement effective in January. Foster oversaw the CMS' estimates of national healthcare expenditures, overseeing 100 who amass data for determining Medicare payment rates. Snyder was with CMS for 41 years.

“Michelle's accomplishments over her career have been numerous and wide-ranging, including leading the successful development and deployment of the Healthcare Integrated General Ledger Accounting System (HIGLAS) that introduced an unprecedented level of fiscal accountability and discipline to the management of hundreds of billions of dollars in annual Medicare program expenditures; achieving the agency's first clean financial audit opinion; establishing the Medicare Error Rate Measurement program; expanding community-based health center programs; developing the agency's first Federally Funded Research and Development Center for healthcare; and establishing CMS' Mentoring Program,” Tavenner said in the e-mailed statement.