SNI Forward, June 2025

Last month, as I sat in an hour+ of LA traffic to visit a CAPH/SNI member system only several miles away, I found myself astonished by the sheer scale of the standstill. But I also noticed something else: much like LA drivers steadily navigating an endless sea of stubborn brake lights, our public health care systems continue to push forward, inch by inch, through their own gridlock of challenges—staffing shortages, budget constraints, rising costs, and the seemingly ever-changing policy landscape. It is not always fast, it is definitely not easy, but they keep going, driven by an internal sense of urgency and an enduring commitment to their missions.

I saw the results of that determination and innovation firsthand during my recent visits to the LA Department of Health Services’ LA General Medical Center and UCLA Health’s Ronald Reagan Medical Center. What stood out was the extraordinary dedication of the providers, leadership, and staff at both systems, reflected in their many hard-won, recent achievements for patients: transformed primary and specialty care access, numerous Quality Incentive Pool (QIP) measures at and above the national 90th percentile, growing access to community and critical tertiary care and facilities, innovative programs like LA General’s Safer at Home (recently featured in JAMA), and exceptional accomplishments like the world’s first-ever human bladder transplant completed at UCLA Health. Not to mention both hospitals’ helipads, a testament to their essential identities as Level 1 trauma centers, which also happen to offer spectacular views (see photos below).

In this issue, we highlight more stories of our member systems’ relentless drive and how SNI is supporting them to collaborate in new ways to advance patient care.

Giovanna
Executive Director
California Health Care Safety Net Institute

P.S. Save the date for our Annual CAPH/SNI Conference on December 3-5 in San Diego.

 

Staff from SNI, the California Association of Public Hospitals and Health Systems, and LA General Medical Center stand on the system’s helipad in May 2025.

 

Staff from SNI and UCLA Health’s Ronald Reagan Medical Center on the system’s helipad in May 2025.

 

Systems focus on aligning quality data with plans

Aligning quality data was originally just one of several planned areas of collaboration this year between public health care systems and Medi-Cal managed care plans. However, as the State moves to hold plans accountable for QIP reporting—and as overlap increases between QIP and Medi-Cal Managed Care Accountability Set measures—systems and plans have prioritized spending more time aligning their data.

In response, SNI and our partner in this work, the Local Health Plans of California (LHPC) Institute, have convened systems and plans more frequently and developed practical resources to help them close data gaps and learn from successful models.

 

Staff from SNI and the LHPC Institute host a convening of public health care systems and Medi-Cal managed care plans on May 29, 2025, in Burbank.

 

Here is a summary of this recent work:

  • Large convening in Burbank. Last month, nearly 100 leaders from systems and plans from across the State gathered to examine transitions of care quality measures and share ways to better leverage Health Information Exchanges (HIEs). During one panel, UC San Diego Health, Contra Costa County, and L.A. Care Health Plan shared how they use HIEs to improve patient care and performance rates.
  • Smaller affinity groups meeting monthly. Eager to dive into the operational side of exchanging and aligning data, more than a dozen systems and their plan counterparts are meeting monthly—and staying connected between sessions—as they make concrete progress.
  • SNI case study on what success looks like. Riverside University Health System (RUHS) and Inland Empire Health Plan (IEHP) achieved a remarkable 43% relative improvement in controlled blood pressure for their shared patients after aligning their quality data. RUHS’s Shunling Tsang, MD, and IEHP’s Tara Tokijkla share advice with systems and plans wanting to achieve similar results.
  • SNI data alignment roadmap outlines the process—and best practices—for systems and plans to compare and align their quality data.
  • SNI data alignment report shares findings from four system-plan collaborations so others can learn from their challenges and successes.

 

Improving timely access to care in L.A. and Riverside

Providing patients with timely access to care is a persistent challenge for systems across the country. For large public health systems in highly populated and sprawling counties like the Los Angeles County Department of Health Services (LADHS) and RUHS, that challenge can be even greater.

Yet, both systems have successfully increased access to primary care, specialty care, and emergency department services without increasing the number of providers or compromising quality.

In an SNI-hosted, two-part webinar series, leaders from LADHS and RUHS shared how they are achieving these results.

LADHS: Reduced time from cancer diagnosis to treatment by 37%

In the first webinar, Evan Raff, MD, and Bahar Basseri from LADHS shared insights into their Cancer Navigation Program. Since its launch in 2022, the program has played a crucial role in identifying the needs of patients with cancer early and developing care plans for nearly 3,000 individuals.

“Imagine all the coordination that needs to align—from the patient’s perspective and the hospital system’s—to get a patient with cancer into that first clinic visit,” said Basseri. “Recognizing the need to improve our quality and coordination of care, our mission became clear: to create a program to ensure that every patient receives timely, equitable, respectful cancer care.”

The Cancer Navigation Program has helped LADHS reduce the time from diagnosis to treatment initiation by 37% for patients as young as 24 to those over 85.

RUHS: Redesigned workflows led to a 17.5% increase in well-child visits

In the second part of our webinar series, RUHS’s Melissa Taylor, Mahbuba Khan, MD, and Geri Whelen discussed their intentional, comprehensive redesign of their standard workflows and action plans using Lean methodology. During this redesign, they engaged frontline staff to identify inefficiencies, suggest improvements, and test solutions.

As a result, RUHS strengthened teamwork while providing patients with more care, faster. Here are some highlights:

  • Well-child visits increased by 17.5%
  • An additional 9.1% of assigned lives were seen in primary care
  • Emergency department boarding time decreased by 10 minutes

RUHS attributed these improvements to three strategies:

  1. Structured methods to understand root causes and to experiment with solutions
  2. An empowered frontline “army of problem solvers” to ensure engagement at every level
  3. A culture of leaders serving as coaches to support and encourage the team

 

The Quality Incentive Pool’s (QIP) three-year impact

Since 2017, QIP has made it possible for California’s public health care systems to ambitiously implement comprehensive delivery transformations that improve patients’ quality of care and access.

You can see the results in SNI’s infographic, which highlights QIP’s impact on population health across California from 2021 to 2023. Here are a few standouts:

  • 932,405 patients were screened for depression and received follow-up plans 
  • 364,838 children and adolescents received well-care visits
  • 49,449 patients achieved diabetes control