About CCHP

The Center for Connected Health Policy (CCHP) is a non-profit planning and strategy organization working to remove policy barriers that prevent the integration of telehealth technologies into California's health care system.

Telehealth technologies are tools to improve health outcomes and access to care, particularly among uninsured and low-income Californians, and to make the state’s health care system more efficient and cost-effective.  CCHP advocates for policies that expand telehealth services in pursuit of these goals.
 
CCHP conducts objective policy analysis and research, develops non-partisan policy recommendations, and operates telehealth demonstration projects.

CCHP’s current telehealth demonstration project is The Specialty Care Safety Net Initiative (SCSNI).  This project connects 38 safety net clinics across California with medical specialists at all five University of California Schools of Medicine.  The SCSNI serves as a laboratory to identify the means of establishing permanent relationships between UC medical schools and California’s safety net providers.

In February 2011, CCHP released a report, “Advancing California’s Leadership in Telehealth Policy:  A Telehealth Model Statute & Other Policy Recommendations,” which recommends modernizing state telemedicine and workforce laws, to encourage more robust adoption of telehealth technologies.  CCHP developed the report for state policy makers, to help remove policy barriers to the use of telehealth as an integral part of California’s health care system.  

CCHP is actively collaborating with other statewide health organizations in support of a credentialing proposal by the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS), which would provide hospitals with more flexibility in credentialing telehealth professionals.  A final decision on this proposed credentialing rule change, which was released in May 2010, is anticipated in Spring 2011.

In April 2009, CCHP released an issue brief, “Connecting California: The Impact of the Stimulus Package on Telehealth and Broadband Expansion.”  It describes broadband and telehealth provisions in the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009, and makes recommendations on how California can take maximum advantage of ARRA funding opportunities.