Manatt’s Johnah P.B. Frohlich, a managing director with Manatt Health Solutions, spoke to California Healthline about how Cal eConnect, a nonprofit designated by the State of California to lead a collaborative process for ensuring the meaningful use of electronic health information exchange (HIE) in the state, can be successful in its recent hand-off of programmatic work.
According to California Healthline, the board of Cal eConnect voted on May 11, 2012, to end its grant agreement with the state. The board has decided to turn over its programmatic work to an organization that could get it done faster, as there is only 19 months left before health care reform launches. A new agreement is now being forged between the state and the Institute for Population Health Improvement at the University of California, Davis.
The key to success for Cal eConnect is trust, said Frohlich, who was the state’s deputy secretary of Health and Human Services for Information Technology when Cal eConnect was launched two years ago.
“The trust fabric is of paramount importance. It is the single biggest issue for this type of exchange,” Frohlich said. “You have to maximize that trust, we wanted to have the framework set up to ensure we built that into the program.”
Everyone has to buy into the program for it to succeed, and everyone has to believe it will succeed before they’ll buy in. Frohlich said that in large part, Cal eConnect has done exactly that, but not completely.