CPCA Announces New Care Transformation Team and Grows More Leaders with Phase Two of Organizational Restructure!
In March of this year, CPCA announced a significant restructure of our organization that created new leadership opportunities for several CPCA leaders. In July, we announced a second phase of this restructure with the following promotions and changes for another group of leaders. In addition to these promotions, we also wanted to share another exciting development about the formation of a new team at CPCA – the Care Transformation team. This new team represents CPCA’s commitment to working with our members to innovate and evolve their models of care in order to be effective, successful, and competitive in the health care delivery system. This new team will also directly support and work closely with Dr. Mike Witte as our CMO, so that moving forward, CPCA’s clinical, quality, and transformation efforts are more aligned and strengthened.
Cindy Keltner, Director of Care Transformation
In this role, Cindy will direct our new Care Transformation team and will be responsible for developing the programming and technical assistance efforts related to the team’s work in transitioning our members towards care redesign and delivery to improve health outcomes. The team’s program work includes areas such as quality improvement, PCMH, data, social determinants of health (SDOH), payment reform, value based care, EHR vendor connections and our relationships with our managed care and health plan partners. As part of this reorganization and transition, Cindy will work more closely with Dr. Mike Witte. As the new Care Transformation team/department evolves, Cindy will also work closely with the other CPCA directors to ensure connection between our current departments and our brand new department.
Christina Hicks, Director of Health Center Operations
In this role, Christina will direct the HCO team and will be responsible for advancing CPCA’s programming and technical assistance efforts related to health center operations in today’s delivery environment. This will include topic areas such as workforce, PPS, emergency preparedness, oral health, licensing, compliance, and billing, among others. In addition, Christina will play a more visible role in CPCA’s relationship and engagement with state partners, such as DHCS and CDPH. Christina will continue reporting to Ginger Smith, and will partner closely with Cindy Keltner as she transitions her Care Transformation team into its own department.
Beth Malinowski, Director of Government Affairs
In this role, Beth will direct the day-to-day operations of the Government Affairs team. She will be responsible for advancing CPCA’s policy priorities and strategic plan through state and federal advocacy, legislative activities, and regulatory affairs. This will include supporting our critical ongoing partnership with regional consortia on coordinated government affairs activities. In addition, working closely with the new Director of Health Center Operations and Vice Presidents, Beth will play a more visible role in CPCA’s relationship and engagement with state leaders, such as DHCS and CDPH leadership. Beth will continue to report to Andie Patterson, and looks forward to partnering closely with the leadership team.
Additionally, CPCA announced the following promotions in June of this year:
Erin Perry, Deputy Director of Education and Training
In this role, Erin will oversee the training program and provide strategic leadership for the development of new offerings and content, but will transition away from directly supporting the in person trainings and conferences. She will supervise Tiffany Ruvalcaba and a new training position currently being developed. Erin will continue to oversee the CPCA’s “+” programs and also actively seek and explore new opportunities for partnerships, tools, and technology to enhance our learning portfolio and to meet the training and educational needs of our members.
Kelly Cimino, Assistant Director of Marketing and Communications
In this role, Kelly will continue her current work and take a more active role in CPCA’s organizational communication. Since taking the lead on CPCA’s marketing efforts in 2013, she has grown the marketing program into what it is today using cutting edge strategies to promote CPCA’s programs and services. Kelly has actively overseen the consistent branding of CPCA products and services, events, and logo use. She was also responsible for overseeing the design, development and implementation of the CPCA, CaliforniaHealth+ and Advocates websites and continues to ensure that they are effectively maintained. She also oversees CPCA’s social media platforms and content development, and supports the Marketing and Development Peer Network.
Lindsey Ono, Assistant Director of Events and Sponsorship
In this role, Lindsey will continue to manage the logistics for all CPCA events and in-person trainings, as well as take over the Annual Conference planning in totality starting with our 2020 conference.
Lindsey manages CPCA’s tradeshow and exhibitors, as well as oversees CPCA’s Annual and Events sponsorship programs. Since coming on board, our event tradeshows continue to grow – often selling out. Working with leadership, Lindsey continues to find new sponsors and opportunities for both the Annual Sponsorship Program and our individual events. Lindsey makes the most of our resources to produce amazing events, which includes effectively managing event-related vendors and contracts.
Allie Budenz, Assistant Director of Quality Improvement
Allie has been with CPCA since October 2015 and has made numerous significant contributions to our organization. Allie recently led our behavioral health strategic visioning session with CPCA members to articulate a unified statewide role of health centers in the behavioral health delivery system and to establish strategic policy/advocacy priorities. Allie has been instrumental in establishing CPCA as a lead in leveraging CHCs as integrated, community-based, MAT providers. She was invited and participates in several formal and informal workgroups, including CHCF’s CA Opioid Safety Network, CCI’s Treating Addiction in Primary Care Advisory Committee, and UCLA ISAP’s brain trust. Allie worked with colleagues in GA to ensure that CPCA weighed in with the state on the development and implementation of CA Hub and Spoke Services and she continues to support the GA team as needed around behavioral and mental health issues. Most recently Allie developed and executed an RFP process for the development of a new QI+ program and is now working with the vendor to develop the curriculum for the training.
Lucy Saenz, Assistant Director of Data Informatics
Lucy has been with CPCA since April 2016 and she has made significant contributions to CPCA in the area of data, analytics, quality and EHR vendor partnerships. Lucy’s passion for data and improving our member’s ability to improve and use their data has been a key factor in her success. Lucy has been a significant contributor and leader in CPCA’s training efforts for our value-based care work including our efforts to evaluate the readiness levels of members participating in the CP3 pilot for payment reform. Lucy has been instrumental in CPCA’s efforts on social determinants of health and leads our efforts on helping our members meet the social needs of their patients and using data to develop statewide reports to utilize for advocacy and policy efforts. In addition to Lucy’s current responsibilities, she will now take the lead on CPCA’s full complement of SDOH efforts.
Bao Xiong, Assistant Director of Health Center Operations
Bao was hired in October 2016 and quickly built her knowledge around billing, emergency preparedness, and oral health issues. For the last three years, Bao has done a tremendous job providing technical assistance and support to individual health centers, building important partnership with DHCS and other external stakeholders, and serving as content lead for the Billing Managers Conference. She will continue to serve as our resident billing expert, and will also oversee and provide guidance to CPCA’s oral health and emergency preparedness work. A new addition to Bao’s work will include serving as lead on CPCA’s Revenue Cycle Management (RCM) program, working to provide technical assistance and support to existing RCM clients, as well as conducting outreach efforts to health centers that could benefit from the program.