In addition to covering more people than any other insurer in the US, Medicaid also covers half of all births and one-quarter of all behavioral health spending. Improving Medi-Cal, California’s Medicaid program, is one of the best investments we can make in the health of our state.

One of the most efficient ways to achieve this improvement is by helping market-based innovations succeed and scale in the health care safety net. The CHCF Health Innovation Fund invests in emerging technology and service companies that enable payers and providers to expand access, improve quality, and lower costs for patients — in Medicaid and beyond.

New & Noteworthy

Project

Opportunities for Emerging Technologies in the Medicaid Market

Medi-Cal, Telehealth
Despite being the nation's largest health insurer, Medicaid remains largely overlooked by investors and entrepreneurs. Learn more about the myriad opportunities for innovation within this market.
CHCF Blog

New CHCF Investment Streamlines Care Coordination in the Safety Net

Melissa Buckley
Investing in Innovation, Providers
Health care providers cannot effectively coordinate a patient’s care without access to a shared set of accurate clinical information about that patient. That’s what Collective Medical aims to provide, and that’s why it has received the CHCF Health Innovation Fund’s latest program-related investment.
CHCF Blog

Why Medicaid Is an Untapped Opportunity for Innovation

Melissa Buckley
Behavioral Health, Investing in Innovation
Physician Andrey Ostrovsky learned a lot as an entrepreneur and during a stint as chief medical officer at the Center for Medicaid and CHIP Services. Melissa Buckley, director of the CHCF Health Innovation Fund, asked him to share insights about opportunities and pitfalls in the Medicaid space.
Press Release

CHCF Invests in Quartet to Expand Care Coordination in California

Behavioral Health, Investing in Innovation
The CHCF Health Innovation Fund invests in Quartet, whose digital platform better integrates primary and behavioral health care for patients with co-occurring physical and mental health issues.
CHCF Blog

The Big Shortage: How Technology Can Help Solve America’s Health Workforce Problem

Sandra R. Hernández
Telehealth, Workforce
CHCF President and CEO Sandra Hernández gave the keynote address at the annual Health 2.0 Conference on the role of technology in solving America's health workforce challenges. This article is adapted from that talk.
Press Release

CHCF Announces Investment in Groups, an Opioid Addiction Treatment Company

Opioid Safety, Investing in Innovation
As part of its work to address the opioid epidemic, the California Health Care Foundation (CHCF) is supporting Groups, a mission-driven medical practice that offers affordable treatment for opioid use disorder in rural communities.

The Portfolio of CHCF Health Innovation Fund

Collective Medical

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.…
$1,000,000.00

Quartet

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…
$700,000.00

Groups

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…
$1,200,000.00

RubiconMD

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…
$750,000.00

mPulse Mobile

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…
$725,000.00

Landmark Health

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…
$900,000.00
View Full Portfolio

Advisers

Brian Chee
Managing Partner, Polaris Partners
Martin Felsenthal
Partner, Health Velocity Capital
Chris Grant
Senior Vice President, Kaiser Permanente & KP Ventures
Barbara Lubash
Managing Director, Versant Ventures
Lynne Chou O’Keefe
Partner, Kleiner Perkins Caufield and Byers
Tom Rodgers
SVP and Managing Director, McKesson Ventures
Lisa Suennen
Senior Managing Director, GE Ventures
Nicholas Augustinos
President & CEO, Aver

Team

Melissa Buckley
Director, Innovation Fund
Carl Bouthillette
Senior Program Investment Officer 
Hong Truong
Senior Program Investment Officer
Leslie Walker
Communications Consultant, Innovation Fund
Andrea Hsu
Innovations Fellow
Apryl Rhinehart
Program Associate