Strategy, Policy & Technology

BluePath Health provides health care consulting to health systems, government and commercial payors, technology providers and grant makers. We develop forward-thinking policies and strategies that improve care delivery and community health.

STRATEGY

Three- to five-year strategies for value-based public and private health organizations.

POLICY

Workable federal and state policy grounded in provider practices and patient needs.

TECHNOLOGY

Product solutions and analysis to support coordinated care and population-based health.

Our Blog

Health Policy Round Up 10.16.19

On October 13th, Governor Newsom signed six telehealth-related bills that will impact telehealth expansion throughout California. Among the signed bills is A.B. 744, which requires telehealth payment parity for commercial payers by January 1, 2021. Newsom also signed A.B. 1264, which allows providers to use telehealth to conduct examinations prior to prescribing, dispensing or furnishing drugs so long as the examination meets the standard of care. This strengthens the legal foundation needed to ensure the growth of telehealth to provide t right care at the right time in the right place.

From July 2016 to February 2017, CalPERS engaged BluePath Health to lead the development of its 2017 to 2022 strategic plan. Read more.

The Center for Connected Health Policy partnered with BluePath Health to address policy barriers to the adoption of e-consult, a telehealth mode that expands access to and quality of specialty care for California’s safety net. Read More >

BluePath Health provides technology and implementation support to Blue Shield of California Foundation’s cohort of electronic consult grantees. Read More >

The BluePath Health Team

One of the many reasons our clients engage with us is because of the depth of our team and the relationships we forge.

Meet the team

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BluePath Health

80 E Sir Francis Drake Blvd, Suite 4H
Larkspur, CA 94939
T: 415 378-3754

info@bluepathhealth.com

Mike Buhl graduated from the University of Virginia with a double major in Systems Engineering and Economics in May of 2016. Mike is currently in his second year with Ernst & Young, where he serves as a technology consultant within the financial services sector. He has consulted for multiple financialinstitutions, including a leading US broker-dealer, a government-sponsored mortgage enterprise, and a banking institution. Mike currently lives in Arlington, Virginia.

During the summer of 2014, Mike was an intern at BluePath Health, which he says was an incredible and valuable experience. He had first-hand experience of the consulting lifestyle, and felt like part of the team. During the summer, he interacted with clients, participated in meetings, took ownership of work products, and learned all about the healthcare industry, telehealth initiatives, and consulting. For one project, he create heat maps and the visualizations of OSHPD specialist data for California counties to highlight specialist needs and pinpoint telehealth opportunities. The skills he gained from his internship still help his career today.

Callie Monroe Watts is currently sophomore at the University of California, Santa Barbara where she majors in economics. She has just been accepted to a study abroad program in London for fall 2018.

Her summer working at BluePath Health was an amazing experience. First of all, she worked under people passionate and knowledgeable about their field, which she found very inspiring. She also increased her understanding of the current health care ecosystem, including its structure, its flaws, and its future. Last but not least, she improved her research and synthesizing skills while collecting data and information about different health care companies.

Jacqueline (Jackie) Wilson is a graduate student at the University of California, Berkeley, where she is obtaining a Master of Public Health degree in Health Policy and Management. During her summer internship with BluePath Health (BPH), she served as a policy analyst for client engagements across both private and public sectors. For a healthcare software startup, she conducted a funding research and strategy analysis that identified key federal and state grant opportunities in response to the COVID-19 public health emergency. In addition, for Marin County’s “Marin 9 to 25” youth equity project, she developed a landscape analysis that has informed the project committee’s next steps and recommendations. Lastly, Jackie gained new experience in coalition building through the California Telehealth Policy Coalition, for which she monitored ongoing policy proposals and developed materials for committee meetings and webinars. For these projects, her creative problem-solving, communication, and analytical skills were significant additions to the BPH team.

Prior to starting graduate school, Jackie was a senior consultant at Booz Allen Hamilton where she worked on a variety of compliance, technology, and policy projects for the Center for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS). She also had internships with UnitedHealth Group’s Office of Government Affairs and the Office of the National Coordinator for Health IT in Washington D.C. Her bachelor’s degree in Business Administration is from the University of Notre Dame, where she double-majored in Information Technology Management and Political Science.

Dr. Hogarth is a professor of medical informatics and medicine at UC Davis. He currently leads the development and on-going technical operation of the California Electronic Death Registration System (EDRS), the largest electronic death registration system in the United States. His team also developed the Maryland EDRS, which went live in 2015.

Since 2010, he has also served as the Chief Medical Information Officer and informatics lead for the UC-wide Athena Breast Health Network project, which includes electronic patient-reported information from over 100,000 women in California.

Dr. Hogarth is the UC Davis site informatics lead for the pSCANNER network, a PCORI-funded distributed clinical research data network (CDRN) with access to over 30 million patient records. He is also Medical Director of the UCDHS “Clinical Registries” group, which manages over a dozen clinical registries used for quality improvement and clinical outcomes research within UC Davis.

Dr. Hogarth holds a degree in biomedical engineering from Texas A&M and a medical degree from the University of Texas Southwestern Medical School. He completed his internal medicine training at the UC Davis Medical Center in 1995 and a fellowship in medical informatics in the UC Davis Department of Pathology in 1997.

Erika Cerutti has over 20 years of experience in bookkeeping and executive administration for a variety of industries. She brings her combined expertise in technical bookkeeping and professional soft skills to help BluePath Health achieve their objectives.

Managing accounting functions, project schedule coordination, and client service with aplomb, Ms. Cerutti is well-established as an office manager and bookkeeper extraordinaire in Marin County. Skilled at project coordination and developing administrative systems, she also possesses professional empathy and discretion with her background in nursing. Ms. Cerutti began her career as a registered nurse at Berkeley-Orinda Women’s Health and with Marta Spain, M.D., in Greenbrae.

Ms. Cerutti holds a Bachelor of Science in Nursing from the Samuel Merritt School of Nursing at Saint Mary’s College. She earned a registered nurse license and public health nurse license, then later obtained a national bookkeeper certification and a certificate of applied accounting.

Ciara Keegan is researcher and grant writer who joined BluePath Health in 2020. During the summer of 2018 as a BPH intern, she worked with the Public Health Department of Marin County’s RxSafe program and also provided research and writing for presentations and reports focused on telehealth and healthcare policies. Now, as a full time BPH team member, she provides high-quality research for projects regarding Medicaid telehealth reimbursement and barriers to telephone and broadband access that low-income Americans face. She is also working on a Marin-based youth wellness project called “Marin 9 to 25”.

She holds a BA in Science, Technology and Society from Brown University, where she studied Science and Society with a focus on Health and Medicine

Adina Safer is a healthcare consultant with more than 20 years of deep industry experience focused on new product development, technology adoption and complex program management. With this experience, she provides clients with a broad understanding of stakeholder positioning among industry leaders, physicians, key academic medical centers and clinics. Her expertise includes addressing market access challenges as well as developing reimbursement and commercialization models for biotech, medical device and digital health companies. Her clients span payers, pharmacy benefit managers and Medicare for whom she drives commercialization. Past experience includes 12 years with CVS as well as work with start-ups, venture capital firms and Fortune 500. She holds a BA from Columbia University and a MBA/MPH from University of California, Berkeley.

Emily Brower Auchard has 20 years of experience providing communications, content strategy and editing services for technology, biotech and health care companies of all sizes. Her work at BluePath Health has included white papers on health IT topics, such as telehealth and health information exchange, and isssue briefs on California health IT policy. She also provides content strategy and development for BluePath Health clients for blogs and social media.

Her previous work in health care includes developing user interface copy for consumer-facing health care technology and producing case studies on health care application design and architecture for companies such as Practice Fusion and MedicaLogic.

While working in the the high-tech industry, she provided communications services for a wide range of technology companies including industry leaders, including Apple, NeXT Computer and Sun Microsystems, as well as many start-ups.

Ms. Auchard holds a B.A. with Honors from Wesleyan University in Middletown, CT.

John Weir has over 18 years of senior management experience in healthcare technology, spanning an array of national and regional initiatives. With a rich history in vendor client services leadership, he has paved the way in EHR and population health management software rollout and integrations, building methodologies and teams focused on client satisfaction and product utilization. He has a keen ability to effectively align technology use with strategies to improve outcomes and quality across the care continuum.

Mr. Weir’s skills include developing large-scale programs and new service lines for both private and government clients and completing many large-scale clinical data integration projects for hospitals and physician organizations. He has provided project management of an Office of the National Coordinator (ONC) CMMI grant with 15 healthcare organizations to leverage healthcare data analytics to improve care coordination and population health management. He also led a pioneering EHR adoption program for primary care physicians, funded by the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS), called DOQ-IT. This program offered insight into technical assistance, financial incentives and EHR systems requirements that could aid CMS in achieving higher EHR adoption rates.

As a client services executive, he has led implementation and account management teams for organizations including Phytel Inc., Allscripts and Lumetra Healthcare Solutions, driving new business and excellent client satisfaction results. As a business leader, he provides strategy development, business planning, and project execution for organizations and is adept at influencing multi-stakeholder groups to ensure team harmonization and delivery of commitments within tight budgets and aggressive deadlines.

John holds a bachelor’s degree with honors in history and political science from the University of Ulster in Northern Ireland. Additionally, he completed graduate-level courses in computing and information systems at University of Ulster in Northern Ireland before starting his career in healthcare technology.

As BluePath Health’s (BPH) Director of Policy, Robby Franceschini supports clients’ strategic needs for health policy, government relations and business development. His expertise encompasses Medi-Cal, telehealth and health information exchange (HIE) and his client experience includes work with foundations, government agencies, health care start-ups and payers. Prior to joining the BPH team, Robby worked with Cleveland Clinic’s legal department and also supported Medi-Cal policy development at the National Health Law Program’s Los Angeles office. He also gained experience in science and technology policy and ethics as an AAAS Emerging Leaders in Science and Society Fellow and research assistant for NIH- and Wellcome Trust-funded projects. He holds a BA, JD and MPH from the University of Washington.