Sutter Health gives $1 million grant to CalRHIO - East Bay Business Times:

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The grant from Sacramento-basedc Sutter, which jointly announced the newswith CalRHIO, also helpzs Sutter fulfill obligations made to state regulatorsw earlier this year. Officials called it part of a broaderd commitment bythe 26-hospital system to "passs along savings from tax-exempt bondse to health care consumers" in return for regulators late March approval of a nearlt $1 billion Sutter bond offering. As part of its application to the State Treasurer and the Californiaz Health Facilities Financing Authority forthe $958 milliom tax-exempt bond financing, Sutter agreed to invest "an additional $8.
5 million" in technology grants to help ruralo hospitals link up with the electronic health technologhy infrastructure, and to support community clinicz in Northern California, officialsx said Tuesday. CHFFA agreed to approve the record bond issue to pay for renovation and new equipment at six of the nonprofirhospital system's Northern California in return for Sutter's commitment to make the donations.
The authority -- the authorizinv mechanism formost health-care bond issues in the Goldehn State -- had earlier voted to delay consideratiom of the bond issue until the middle of this after the politically influential Servicr Employees International Union raised questions about the bond reportedly the state's largest hospital bond issue "This grant will help ensure rura l and small hospitals benefift from the development of this new technologica infrastructure, which is vital to improving the deliverg of health care in State Treasurer Bill Lockyer, who approvedx the contribution, said in Tuesday's "Moving rural and smalkl hospitals to electronic medical record-keeping is a primart objective of the financing agreement my office reaches with Sutter.
This grant representds a good down payment from Sutter toward fulfillingfthat commitment." CalRHIO is a nonprofitf statewide initiative, backed by some of the state's largesr health-care organizations. Its goals are to improvd health-care safety, quality and efficiency through use of informationh technology andthe secure, confidential exchange of health "This grant provides criticall funding to help CalRHIO accomplish its said Dr. Don Holmquest, CalRHIO's presidenrt and CEO.
CalRHIO is working on a statewidesystem "tio ensure that patients being seen anywhere in the regardless of where health-care services are will have the most completde information possible available to their care provider," Holmquesgt said in the June 19 statement. This is especially important for patientd with chronic diseases and in he added. Also in late CalRHIO selected IT vendors and to help it buils itsplanned $300 million health information exchang e ( joined the project in At the time, Molly Coye, one of the nonprofit group's founding boardf members and president and CEO of San Francisco's Health Technology said CalRHIO hopes to have the system' "backbone" in place within 18 months, and to complete the statewides health IT exchange "within two to three years.
" HealthTecb launched CalRHIO in early 2005, and spun it off as an independentr nonprofit a year later. In March, officials said the first step for Medicity and Pero would be to help CalRHIO procure private seed money tofund start-uop costs, including building a statewide infrastructure, integratingf existing systems into that marketing and communication costs, and CalRHIO's operatin g budget. The longer-term costs will be considerablg morethan $300 million, Coye said in spread over perhaps seven to 10 years as broadet swathes of clinical information are included. Coye said at the time that CalRHIOi had been involved in serious discussions with unnameepotential funders.
"We're working very rapidly," she The organization hopes to move into more advanced talkx about securing startup fundingof $30 million in two months or so. "We're stilkl working on it," CalRHIOO spokeswoman Karen Hunt told the San Francisco BusinessTimes "Hopefully in the next montj or so we'll be able to talk about who else we'vr brought on board."