Blumenthal will return to Harvard in April

According to former U.S. Sen. Dave Durenberger (R-Minn.), national health IT coordinator Dr. David Blumenthal will return to Harvard in April, and Blumenthal, as has been widely rumored, is leaving to keep his tenure.

So far, Blumenthal and HHS have been saying he would leave his current post at an unspecified point in the spring. But, as Durenberger writes in his weekly commentary about health policy, “David told me he was planning an April return to Harvard when his two year leave to serve the new administration is up. … David’s departure to keep his tenure at Harvard apparently came as a surprise in D.C. where he’d become widely respected for aligning the Office of National Coordinator with the ‘meaningful use’ of health IT.”

Durenberger also notes that Blumenthal is the brother of Sen. Richard Blumenthal (D-Conn.). I wondered if there was a relation. Now I know.

Durenberger chairs the National Institute of Health Policy and serves as a senior health policy fellow at the University of St. Thomas in Minneapolis.