Naomi Fuchs is chief executive officer of Santa Rosa Community Health Centers, the largest federally qualified health center in the North Bay and the second largest provider of primary care in Sonoma County. She will be a panelist at the North Bay Business Journals upcoming Health Care Conference, which will feature a panel of providers and health insurance brokers detailing both the challenges and opportunities under the Affordable Care Act.

Q: The North Bay now has two Accountable Care Organizations, Meritage Medical Network and Redwood Community Care Organization. How does this impact the delivery of care, and can we expect more movement in this direction as providers plot health care reform strategies?

Naomi Fuchs

Ms. Fuchs: All health care providers are motivated to achieve the Triple Aim of improving the experience of care, improving the quality of care, and reducing the cost of care. One of the fundamental strategies for meeting this goal is strengthening the coordination of care across the continuum of services. The Accountable Care Organization (ACO) model creates the infrastructure and systems among health care partners to provide real-time clinical support to patients in a team-based model of care.

Q: What can the North Bay and the health care sector in general expect in terms of increased consolidation; and how might this affect the physician landscape in the future, as health systems and hospitals seek to add providers to their networks?

Ms. Fuchs: Private practice providers will likely want to affiliate with a larger health network in order to be part of community-wide systems of care. This will improve coordination, provide resources for care management, and ensure access to care for patients in ways that might not be possible as a small or solo provider.

Q: In order to provide more coordinated care across the North Bay landscape, every provider has mentioned the importance of patient data, whether a health plan, hospital, or health center. What are the challenges behind this, and how will this transform care? What efforts are you undertaking to address this?

Ms. Fuchs: The challenge is that everyone is on separate systems, and there is no unified language for exchanging information. Health care has barely evolved from a cottage industry with respect to information exchange. Accurate, up-to-date information is essential for care management and cost reduction. The person in the ER needs to know what medications a patient is taking, the specialists needs to know what tests have already been done and what the results are, the primary care provider needs to follow up in a timely way post-hospital discharge with accurate information about the care provided in the hospital.

Right now, this is being done through faxes and phone calls, weeks after the care has been provided or is self-reported by the patient. Currently, ERs and hospitals can look up information when granted appropriate security access, and hospitals are faxing admissions and discharge summaries.

We are about to launch a secure patient health card that a patient can present to an ER or inpatient admissions that has a secure chip (like your credit card) with their basic health record encoded on it; the hospital then has a card reader to access the information. With Redwood Community Health Coalition, community health centers are working on a community-wide project to share information across hospitals and specialists. We hope to complete this project in 2014.

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Health Care Conference 2013: Naomi Fuchs, Santa Rosa Community Health Centers