California Health Care Foundation

Two in five Californians with low incomes who seek behavioral health care do not receive it. And many of those who do are likely to receive it in a primary care setting, where providers often lack the time and/or training to properly diagnose and manage mental health conditions. There are proven solutions for better integrating…

Patients with unmet social needs, such as food insecurity, housing instability, and lack of transportation, tend to have worse health outcomes. As new payment models shift more responsibility for those outcomes onto payers and providers, they have become more invested in addressing patients’ social needs. However, it can be challenging for time-strapped providers to identify…

In order to provide high-value, coordinated patient care, health care organizations must have a comprehensive and accurate view of their patients. Missing or incorrect information can result in wasted spending on duplicated tests, or worse — cause patients serious harm. A key source of incomplete patient records is poor patient identity management, the process by…

Like many states, California faces critical health workforce shortages. Employers in the safety net and in rural areas are especially hard pressed to hire talent with the diversity and skills to meet the needs of the patients they serve. They have a disadvantage from the start, because they lack the recruiting resources that large private…

CHCF is investing in Collective Medical to help providers serving Medicaid patients with complex needs to better share and act on data about those patients in real time. Successfully coordinating a patient’s care, especially if it is complex and involves numerous providers both inside and outside of the health care system, requires effective data sharing.…

More than two-thirds of people with mental illness also have at least one medical condition. Yet those two health issues are typically treated in separate, siloed systems that are difficult for patients to navigate and often result in fragmented care delivery. This challenge disproportionately affects Medicaid enrollees, who are more than twice as likely as…

CHCF is investing in the medication-assisted treatment company Groups to provide opioid addiction treatment to rural communities in California. Access to effective addiction treatment is severely limited or nonexistent in many areas of California, particularly in rural communities with high rates of overdose deaths. Groups provides buprenorphine — an effective medication for opioid use disorder…

CHCF invests in RubiconMD, which connects primary care providers to specialists via electronic consultations, enabling timely, expert clinic advice. Specialty care is in short supply throughout California, and statewide data show that Medi-Cal enrollees are twice as likely as those with employer-based health insurance to report difficulty seeing a specialist. Barriers to accessing specialty care…

CHCF invests in mPulse Mobile, which provides tailored, two-way communications between health plans and their members, to help Medicaid members better access health care. As a result of Medicaid expansion enabled by the Affordable Care Act, Medicaid plans have an influx of newly eligible and enrolled beneficiaries. Yet many Medicaid members are often unaware of…

CHCF invests in Landmark Health to support their efforts to tailor their innovative and proven model of lower-cost, quality clinical care for patients with multiple chronic conditions to California’s safety-net population. Medicaid patients with multiple chronic conditions are among the least well cared for among California’s safety-net population as well as the most expensive. To…

CHCF invested in Seamless Medical Systems, whose software enables patients to enter demographics, clinical history, and more on an iPad, eliminating most paper forms. Streamlining patient flow while improving the patient experience has emerged as a high priority for community health centers (CHCs), many of whom are seeing more patients as a result of health…

CHCF invested in Omada Health to help prevent diabetes by providing patients with online coaching and virtual support groups for guidance on exercise and nutrition. Unhealthy eating and physical inactivity are the lead drivers of chronic disease in the United States, where one in three people have pre-diabetes. Recognizing the rising prevalence of chronic illness,…

CHCF’s Health Innovation Fund invests in healthfinch, a software platform focused on improving the quality of and access to care by automating routine, repeatable tasks to make providers more efficient. California law allows nursing staff and medical assistants to authorize routine prescription refills under physician supervision — provided the prescription is in the patient’s chart…

CHCF invests in iRhythm Technologies, developer of an outpatient cardiac monitor that has the potential to make diagnosing cardiac arrhythmias more efficient, cost-effective, and convenient. Abnormal heart rhythms, or arrhythmias, can be a symptom of serious cardiovascular disease. Each year, more than 2.7 million people in the United States experience arrhythmias, resulting in more than…

CHCF invests in DirectDerm, a telemedicine group that provides remote dermatology consultations, expanding access to expert, convenient, and affordable specialty care. Skin problems account for about 25% of all visits to primary care physicians. For many of these visits, the patient and physician would benefit from a consultation with a dermatologist, but the current shortage…