UC Davis To Lead Electronically Linking Hospitals, Docs Across The State

The UC Davis Health System has signed a $17.5 million agreement with state and federal health officials to lead an effort to electronically link hospitals, doctors and emergency rooms statewide by 2014. Dr. Ken Kizer at the university’s Institute for Population Improvement in Sacramento was asked to take over the state’s troubled health information exchange in June, but did some due diligence before hashing out an agreement.

The program had been run by Cal eConnect, a nonprofit, public benefit corporation in Emeryville selected for the job in 2010. Progress was slow, there was churn at the top and the project changed midstream from a focus on one system for all providers to a system that allows disparate providers to talk to each other.

Renamed the California Health eQuality program — or CheQ — the effort jibes with Kizer’s multidisciplinary approach of addressing health concerns of different populations. He gained national stature in the 1990s for transforming care at the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs and, later, as CEO of Carlsbad-based Medsphere Systems Corp., for installing the largest electronic medical record system in the nation...