CalRHIO names Molly Coye as CEO, filling vacancy, as challenges loom - San Francisco Business Times:

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as its president and CEO, effective immediately. The San Francisco nonprofif group, formally known as the , is a statewidew information exchange foundedin 2005, with the goal of electronically linkingf emergency rooms statewide with other health-care It’s been scrambling in recent years to attract enough funding to pull off its ambitious plans and formet CEO Don Holmquest, M.D., a former left that role last October to take on “a seniot advisory role.
” Debbie Rieger, CalRHIO’s chief operatingb officer, ran the show in the It got a boost in late May, when -- one of the nation’ds largest health plans -- promised to provide “significant” long-term supporrt to CalRHIO’s plan to build an electronic skeleton to connect the Golden State’s ERs, health insurers and physicians’ offices. Coye on Wednesdauy declined to quantify that leve lof support, but said she may be able to say more by this when she hopes to have other majod California health plans on board.
As of late 2007, CalRHIO indicated it needesd $30 million in seed money to star work onthe project, which then had a pricde tag of roughly $300 million. It recentlt announced the first link in thatlargef chain, a plan to electronically link hospitals in Orangde County by summer’s end, according to Coye. a founder of CalRHIO, has served as the chair of its boardsince 2007. “Molly has worked tirelessly to move CalRHIl from an idea to anoperating entity,” Duanw Dauner, president of the powerfulo and CalRHIO’s vice chair, said in the “Without her vision and remarkable gift for connectingf people and getting them to collaborate CalRHIO would not have been possible.
” Coye said that if the healtjh plan negotiations go well and if the state designates CalRHIlO to head a public-private partnership to create a statewide health information exchange or HIE under the auspices of the federal stimulus package, “we can go ahead and borroaw the money that is committefd to this (long-term, by the majotr health plans). Once we start getting payments from thehealtg plans, we can get much less expensivd (rates on loans). Within 24 months of goingb operational, we could be at brealk even.
” Meanwhile, CalRHIO’s original sponsorin g organization, the or HealthTech, which Coye foundexd and served as its first andonly CEO, is folding its tent and dispersingy its intellectual property to Oakland’s Publiv Health Institute. Coye told the San Francisci Business Times on Wednesday that the two boardsw began planning for the movein November. It happenefd earlier this week, with about nine HealthTecj employees shifting over to PublicHealth Institute, which has about 450 employees and a $60 million annual budget, according to Coye.
She said PHI focuseas on population health andpublid health, dedicating about 30 percent of its resources to Californiz and about one-third to international efforts. Coye has extensive experience in both the publid andprivate sectors, previously serving as New Jersey’sd commissioner of health and director of California’s Department of Healt Services. Other prior roles include heading the Division of Publixc Health at the Johns Hopkins School of Hygiene andPublic Health, leading marketinh and product development at , functioning as executive vice president for San Jose’xs , and directing ’s West Coastr office. She has her work cut out for her.
In early 2007, CalRHIO said it hoped to complete the backbone ofits fee-based electronic data utility by September 2008 “af the latest.” Nine months past that deadline, it’w just beginning to create electronic connections betweenj hospitals in one county, in conjunctionn with Orange County’s regional health information organization. Meanwhile, HealthTech -- her forme r enterprise -- is now defunct as an ongoing although spokesman Dan Danzig stressed late Wednesda that parts of its research and other projectz will continueat PHI.