CMS' COO Michelle Snyder retired Dec. 31, and other moves

Michelle Snyder, the CMS' COO, retired from the agency effective Dec. 31. While one published report tied her leaving to rollout problems with HealthCare.gov, the CMS said the decision was Snyder's and that she had originally planned to leave in 2012. CMS Administrator Marilyn Tavenner said in a statement that Snyder stayed on “at my request to help me with the challenges facing CMS in 2013.” The technology teams that built HealthCare.gov reported to Snyder.

Cambridge (Mass.) Health Alliance named Dr. Assaad Sayah to succeed Dr. Gerald Steinberg as the organization's chief medical officer.

Sayah, 52, will start as the alliance's medical chief this month and will act as a physician advocate and leader and play a role in quality oversight, according to a news release announcing his appointment. In November, Steinberg announced plans to retire.

The alliance, which includes the Cambridge Public Health Department, formed a clinical and academic affiliation in early 2013 with Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center, Boston.

Sayah has held several leadership roles with the alliance since he joined the system in 2006, including chief of emergency medicine, medical staff president, chairman of the system's chiefs' council and his most recent position as senior VP of primary and emergency care.

Indianapolis-based Community Health Network named Tom Malasto chief patient experience officer.

In his new role, effective Dec.16, Malasto, 50, is responsible for ensuring patients are able to easily access and navigate the system's services with high-quality customer service.

“The patient experience is so central to our mission and success that we decided to create an entirely new role with a laser focus on the patient experience—at all of our facilities and throughout every point of care,” President and CEO Bryan Bills said in a news release.

Malasto joined the system in 2006 as CEO of the Indiana Heart Hospital, now called Community Heart and Vascular Hospital. Most recently, he has been serving as “executive champion” of an effort to become a high-performing organization and improve the experiences of patients, employees and physicians.

Former Indiana Gov. Mitch Daniels joined the board of Cerner Corp., a Kansas City, Mo.-based company that's one of the largest vendors of electronic health-record systems in the U.S.

Cerner's board appointed Daniels, president of Purdue University, to fill the newly created seat. He was also named to the company's audit, compensation and nominating, governance and public policy committees.

Daniels, 64, a Republican, served as Indiana's Republican governor from 2005-13. During his tenure, he made waves in healthcare by rolling out a program that created an insurance program tied to health savings accounts for low-income residents who aren't eligible for Medicaid. He was widely expected to make a run for the White House in 2012 but chose not to enter the race.

Tommy Thompson, a former HHS secretary and longtime governor of Wisconsin, was named board chairman of Richmond, Va.-based HealthcarePays, a healthcare payments network.

“It makes little sense that the U.S. has no overarching healthcare industry payment network to check for fraud and authorize payments by examining all the payments in the system, similar to what is in place in our financial services sector. I'm joining HealthcarePays to establish the first industry-owned network of this kind,” Thompson said in a Dec. 18 statement regarding his

new position.

Effective Dec. 31, Thompson stepped down as board chairman of CareView Communications, a healthcare technology company.