CalRHIO's Coda

First, a disclaimer. I am not on the CAeHC Board of Directors, I do not attend CAeHC Board of Director meetings, and I do not speak for the CAeHC Board of Directors. The following comments are solely my own personal opinions.

To the matter at hand: a rumor is circulating today that "CalRHIO and and CAeHC will be forming a new nonprofit to be the HIE Governance Entity for California." That comment was published today in an email broadcast by staff from CPCA. While the comment circulated by CPCA is not entirely untrue, it is also less than fully accurate. To flesh out this rumor, the following statements are also true.

1. CalRHIO applied to be the HIE Governance Entity, CalRHIO was turned down outright by the State, and CalRHIO is covering their failure by "agreeing not to compete with a new Governance Entity that is being formed by the State."
   
2. The State, appalled at the suboptimal HIE Governance Entity proposal from CalRHIO and unwilling to act decisively, used CAeHC as a proxy to simply negotiate CalRHIO to death.
3. CAeHC, formed to help stakeholders collaborate on health IT deployments, applied to be the HIE Governance Entity primarily to prevent CalRHIO from becoming the HIE Governance Entity, and now in the end everyone can see that CalRHIO will not be the HIE Governance Entity.
   
4. CAeHC is helping the State launch a new nonprofit HIE Governance Entity, but CAeHC is not going out of business like CalRHIO; that is, CAeHC is merely stepping aside so the State can operate an HIE Governance Entity, because CAeHC has other lines of business to attend to.
5. The new HIE Governance Entity is not a "merger" between CAeHC and CalRHIO, but is rather the final coda in the tragic tale of CalRHIO, while the new HIE Governance Entity is also merely an opening act in the emerging saga of CAeHC.
6. CalRHIO is no longer in business, the State is micromanaging the HIE Governance business, and CAeHC is still in business and still advocating for comprehensive eHealth collaboration.
7. CalRHIO needed an outright win to survive, but CAeHC only needed a draw to eliminate CalRHIO.
8. CalRHIO is no longer relevant and no longer in business, while CAeHC remains relevant and remains in business.

In other eHealth news, yesterday CAeHC submitted a $10 million preliminary proposal to ONC to operate a REC on behalf of 4,000 primary care providers in a five county urban region in California. Also, after a successful year of 38 weekly webinars on eHealth, CAeHC announced yesterday that it will launch a new eHealth Webinar Series for 2010 on January 12.