When Farzad Mostashari, MD, leaves ONC on Friday, October 4, the office’s principal deputy coordinator David Muntz will be going as well. And on Thursday the two emailed ONCer’s saying that Jacob Reider, MD will be taking over as acting national coordinator.
A family physician from the upstate New York town of Slingerlands, Reider came to the ONC in 2011 as a senior policy advisor, after working as CMIO at Allscripts, hospital informatics medical director at the Albany Medical Center and an associate dean for biomedical informatics at Albany Medical College.
Lisa Lewis, current deputy national coordinator for operations, will become acting principal deputy. Prior to working in the principal deputy’s office, Lewis worked as the ONC’s chief grants management officer, overseeing $1.7 billion in health IT grants. Lewis came to the ONC from the Federal Emergency Management Agency, most recently directing FEMA’s Grants Management Division.
Muntz, the former CIO of Baylor Health System in Texas, told federal colleagues in the aforementioned email that he plans to return to the private sector.
“I look forward to continuing to support HHS’ vision of achieving interoperability and better engaging patients from the private sector,” Muntz wrote. “It’s been a privilege to have played any role in such a truly transformative era, much less a leadership role in all the successes we have achieved both inside and outside ONC.”
[See also: Mostashari's letter to ONC staff explaining Muntz departure, naming Jacob Reider, MD acting national coordinator.]
Muntz came to ONC as principal deputy coordinator in January 2012, after working at Baylor for five years and at Texas Health Resources, a 25 hospital system in greater Dallas-Fort Worth, for 16 years, most recently as CIO. He started out in healthcare — and has stayed in healthcare his entire career — as a biostatistician at the Wadley Institutes, a blood bank, research center, outpatient clinic and hospital in Dallas, becoming CEO before leaving in 1990.
At ONC, Muntz worked as principal deputy, one of the three positions reporting directly to the national coordinator, along with chief privacy officer and chief medical officer.
“David Muntz and I have been honored to work together leading this exceptional organization," Mostashari wrote to ONC colleagues, "and we will be departing together as well."
Related:
Q&A: Mostashari's exit interview with eloquent opus on policymaking
