CalRHIO has received a number of significant endorsements from key stakeholders recently.

• The California Hospital Association, the Hospital Council of Northern and Central California, the Hospital Association of Southern California, and the Hospital Association of San Diego and Imperial Counties strongly encourage health plans to participate in CalRHIO to improve the quality and safety of care for their members.
• The two largest emergency physician organizations contracting with hospitals in California (CEP and EPMG) have endorsed CalRHIO and committed to helping us get their hospitals to sign on and physicians using the system.
• The Orange County Partnership RHIO (OCPRHIO) has endorsed CalRHIO. The letter points out the importance of CalRHIO’s role in working with regional HIEs to affordably establish and expand health information exchange.
• LA Care Health Plan, one of the state’s largest Medi-Cal managed care plans, has endorsed CalRHIO, as a way to provide safer, better quality care to its members.
• The California Public Employees Retirement System (CalPERS) endorsed CalRHIO and directed its health plans to participate in the CalRHIO HIE for its 1.2 million members. It also encouraged its plans to participate with their entire books of business.

 

Debbie Rieger has joined CalRHIO as Chief Operating Officer. Debbie brings extensive experience in health care, technology, and project management, including more than 20 years in management and operations. For the past eight years she served as Vice President for Information Technology with Catholic Health Initiatives, the second largest Catholic health system in the country. Based in Denver, she directed market-based operations IT services in 14 hospitals and managed 440 employees across the country.
 
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Don Holmquest is moving into an advisory role with CalRHIO having completed his goal of successfully overseeing the company’s initial start-up phase. Holmquest was appointed President and CEO in 2006 when the company was six-months old and served for more than two years at the helm. During that period, he established a clear business model and put in place the fundamental technology that CalRHIO will use to deliver critical patient clinical information to emergency departments throughout California.

Holmquest said he believes that now is the right time to transition to a new CEO to oversee deployment and execution and move to a fully operational health information exchange. As a Senior Advisor he will assist with the transition and work on special projects. A search for his replacement will take place in 2009.

Molly Coye, Board Chair said, “On behalf of the Board, I express our thanks to Don for the excellent job he did in leading CalRHIO through its first stages of growth. He has built a solid foundation from which we expect to develop one of the nation’s foremost platforms for the exchange of health care information, and we will continue to seek his guidance in the years to come.”
 

Three Safety Net organizations advanced health information exchange projects through a grant provided by CalRHIO and funded through the Blue Shield of California Foundation. View reports on their work.

• Community Health Partnership
• San Francisco Community Clinic Consortium
• Tehachapi Valley Healthcare District

 

Templates, forms, processes, and policies are part of the HIE Tool Kit CalRHIO has developed under a grant from the Blue Shield of California Foundation to assist Safety Net providers in advancing health information exchange. Other types of organizations will find the tools useful as well. The templates can be easily modified and customized to meet the needs of providers, consortia, community clinics, and others. Additional tools are under development. The site will also add tools from other organizations.

Questions? Contact Jennifer Frost, Program Planning and Development Director at 415-537-6938 or jfrost@calrhio.org.
 
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