Organizational Restructure

Earlier this year, our Vice President of Health Access and Quality, Cindy Keltner, announced her retirement. While we are excited for Cindy as she embarks on her new chapter in life, her impending retirement also required that we look at our organizational structure, and marked an opportunity to work with her and other senior leaders to develop a new structure that best allows CPCA to help our members meet the demands of delivering high-quality, patient-led, and community-centered care in an ever-evolving healthcare landscape. The decision to combine the work of health center optimization and regulatory equity under one umbrella in the Strategic Plan was serendipitous in helping guide this new structure.  

To advance the goals above, we are merging the current Health Center Operations & Legal Affairs and Health Access & Quality departments under the leadership of our General Counsel, Joey Cachuela. This merger recognizes that our mission, rooted in health equity, requires an integrated approach to delivering education and technical assistance to members, advocating for the resources necessary for community health centers (CHCs) to operate and innovate, and ensuring regulators and other stakeholders are accountable when implementing programs and policies that impact CHCs. The Health Center Optimization and Legal Affairs Department will also focus on building out CPCA’s capacity and expertise around emerging priority areas for our members, including value-based care arrangements, managed care, and the aging adult/Medicare patient population.

Allie Budenz will lead the team focused on Health Center Optimization and will report to Joey Cachuela. In this role, Allie will lead the team focused on efforts, through advocacy, education, and policy development, to ensure that CHCs are able to thrive in the fast-changing health quality, care delivery, and payment landscape and are positioned to navigate the complex and competitive CHC operational and workforce environments. During this transition period and until her retirement, Cindy Keltner will continue to serve as a senior leader and strategic thought partner to the department and will report to Joey. Allie will be promoted to Vice President of Health Center Optimization on June 1, 2024.

As Deputy General Counsel, Catrina Reyes will lead the team responsible for developing expertise in managed care and other risk-bearing arrangements for CHCs. Recognizing the importance of data in both our advocacy work and quality reporting in existing and new reimbursement mechanisms, Catrina will also lead our Data team. Catrina will continue to play an integral role in CPCA’s legal and regulatory advocacy and provide in-house legal support to CPCA; she will continue to report to Joey Cachuela.

As we continue to learn through the administration of the Medi-Cal Health Enrollment Navigators Project, led by Nataly Tellez, our ability to undertake large-scale initiatives requires a leader who is familiar with the dynamics of our organization and membership and possesses the project management and organizational skills to lead cross-departmental teams in furtherance of our strategic priorities. Accordingly, Nataly has joined the Operations Department as the new Director of Strategic Initiatives, reporting to Ginger Smith. In this role, Nataly will develop and lead CPCA’s enterprise-wide projects and programs and serve as a thought partner to CPCA leadership on the strategy and direction of the organization.