Email crash impeded HHS response to coronavirus
As health department officials worked quickly to negotiate an emergency funding package to fight the spreading coronavirus outbreak on Feb. 23, they came to a frustrating realization: Their email system had crashed.
The previously unreported episode was the latest in a series of information technology snafus caused by the department’s Medicare branch dating back more than a year. This time, HHS decided to remove the agency’s control over its own email operations and launch an audit of its entire information technology infrastructure.
Two people with knowledge of internal discussions said that Verma on Tuesday appealed to the White House to intervene and restore her oversight of CMS email operations, arguing that she needed full control to respond to the coronavirus outbreak.The most recent conflict began on Feb. 27 – four days after the email outage – when HHS chief information officer Jose Arrieta wrote a bruising memo to Azar’s deputy, Eric Hargan, laying out the repeated IT problems at CMS.
POLITICO spoke with four individuals who confirmed the episode and described relevant documentation. They said the incident reflects the extent to which communication problems and discord continue to plague HHS, even while it confronts the unprecedented challenge posed by the coronavirus. The tensions between Azar and Verma, whose agency is technically a part of HHS but often operates independently, came to light late last year when POLITICO reported that the two had spent much of 2019 battling over policy, personnel and even seats on the presidential plane. The feud nearly cost them their jobs, as the White House in December considered replacing one or both of them.
But three officials dismissed the notion that the move was a politically motivated reprisal, arguing that career officials were driving the audit and that CMS’s health IT operations had been heavily scrutinized for months.
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