Savage Joins ONC As Chief Privacy Officer
By Katie Wike, contributing writer
HHS and the ONC have named Lucia Savage, Esq. as the new Chief Privacy Officer.
According to an e-mail from Peter Ashkenza, acting director, office of public affairs and communications for the Office of the National Coordinator for Health IT, Lucia Savage, Esq., has been named as the newest Chief Privacy Officer for HHS and the ONC.
Savage is currently Senior Associate General Counsel at UnitedHealthcare At UnitedHealthcare where she supervises a team that represents the organization in its work in large data transactions related to health information exchanges, health care transparency projects, and other data-driven health care innovation projects.
According to the ONC, she has served on the Governance Board of the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services’ Multi-Payer Claims database project (2011-2013), and collaborated with health information exchanges and state agencies in their planning with payers. Before working for UnitedHealthcare, Savage was General Counsel at the non-profit Pacific Business Group on Health, where she oversaw the legal affairs and state policy initiatives for PacAdvantage.
“She brings to our team a set of rich experiences at the intersection of health information, privacy, and modernizing the health care delivery system. She has stellar qualifications and a passion for health IT in this nation and our work. I am confident that she will bring her wealth of experience to advance critical privacy and security policies in health IT development and implementation,” wrote the ONC’s Karen DeSalvo in an email to ONC staff announcing Savages’s hiring.
“Most recently, she has been emphasizing the importance of cost and quality transparency in healthcare, and has been working on the complex issues of maintaining patient privacy while working to fully realize the potential of health information exchange for better patient care in a learning healthcare system.”
Joy Pritts, former Chief Privacy Officer announced her plans to leave the agency in July, according to Healthcare IT News. Since then, Kathryn Marchesini has served as Acting Chief Privacy Officer.
Savage will join the ONC October 20, 2014.