
OUR HISTORY
EARLY 1980’S
EMPLOYER COALITION FORMS
The San Diego Employers’ Healthcare Coalition, made up of most of the major employers in town, was the driving force behind creation of the Alliance in 1982. The Coalition recruited other key stakeholders in the health system – labor organizations, physicians, hospitals and insurers – to join a collaborative effort to reduce costs, improve quality and increase accessibility to care in San Diego.
1982 – 1989
CREATED FIRST PREFERRED PROVIDER ORGANIZATION IN THE U.S.
The Alliance’s first order of business was to help employers and other healthcare payers in San Diego better manage their healthcare costs. The stakeholders gathered together and agreed to undertake this joint community initiative, and thus, the Alliance was born. The founders incorporated it as a non-profit organization and recruited a Board of Directors with equal representation of the five stakeholder groups – employers, labor organizations, physicians, hospitals and insurers.
Due to new legislature, that enabled Medi-Cal to contract selectively with healthcare providers, Alliance decided to leverage this new opportunity and make development of a PPO in San Diego the kernel of its proposal to the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation. The RWJF selected Alliance to receive a Planning Grant, and the Alliance became a national pioneer in PPO development.
The Alliance named its PPO Community Care Network, or CCN. It was a unique preferred provider healthcare system – the first of its kind in the nation – designed with enough flexibility to serve self-insured employers, labor union trust funds, group health insurers, workers’ compensation payers, school districts and other government entities.
1989
MAJOR STATEWIDE PPO
CCN had become a major statewide PPO, serving both group health and workers’ compensation payers, and generating sufficient income to allow the Alliance to begin funding Alliance Healthcare Foundation (AHF).
1989 – 1994
CCN CREATED AND FUNDED ALLIANCE HEALTHCARE FOUNDATION
Alliance funded Alliance Healthcare Foundation (AHF) annually through profits from CCN.
1994 – 1997
CCN SOLD AND PAYOUTS CONTINUE TO FUND AHF
Alliance sold CCN to Value Health, a national healthcare company Alliance channeled all its proceeds from CCN’s sale into an endowment of $84 million for AHF, which has allowed AHF to continue its important work to this day.
2022
ENDOWMENT EARNINGS
Our endowment holds approximately $80 million in assets today, with funding for programs and operations derived from endowment investment earnings enabling ~64M in direct funding + leveraging ~$41M from national and local funding partners.