Â鶹ŮÓÅ

The Obama administration has nominated Karen DeSalvo to become the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS)'s assistant secretary for health, a position that she has held on an interim basis since last fall. DeSalvo was first named as the department’s acting assistant secretary for health in October 2014, shortly after she became the national coordinator for health information technology. (Ferris, 5/6)

The nursing home industry plans to announce on Thursday that it will expand a 2012 initiative to improve quality, in a move that could feed into an upcoming federal regulation that the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services is developing. New goals include further reducing the number of patients who are readmitted to a hospital after a stay, decreasing staff turnover, reducing the off-label use of antipsychotics in long-term residents and increasing the number of facilities that report data from patient satisfaction surveys. (Adams, 5/6)