Tustin, July, 2008 – Dr. Mark Schafer, Medical Director for Bristol Park Medical Group, has been named to the Executive Committee of the California Cooperative Healthcare Reporting Initiative (CCHRI). Managed by the Pacific Business Group on Health (PBGH), CCHRI is a collaborative of healthcare purchasers, providers and plans. Their primary goal is to help employers and private consumers “make informed healthcare purchasing decisions.”

Schafer who has been with Bristol Park since 1992, first as a full time physician, took on the role of Medical Director in 2000. “As a medical director for a large primary care group, one of my jobs is to oversee the general quality of care provided to our patients by the group. As a member of CCHRI’s Executive Committee, I have the opportunity to work with other branches of the healthcare industry to standardize quality measures and reporting methods and thus produce reliable, accurate, and comparable information for use by consumers of health insurances and physicians’ services.”

CCHRI data is primarily collected from nine participating health plans that represent over 90 percent of the commercial insurance in California. Additionally, several medical organizations such as the California Medical Association, California Hospital Association among others, and over 150 medical groups/IPAs participate in the Patient Assessment Surveys.

“Anyone can say they’re a good healthcare provider or plan, but as the saying goes, ‘the proof is in the pudding.’ The role of CCHRI is to provide the structure and guidelines to produce credible data to back up those claims,” explains Schafer.