Renee Villanueva, Chief Ambulatory and Outreach Officer

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Renee Villanueva, Kern Medical's Chief Ambulatory and Outreach Officer, has over 25 years of experience in multispecialty practice management, with expertise in managed care organizations, IPAs, and hospital-based outpatient clinics.

She is responsible for daily operational practice planning, developing organizational policies and procedures, staff hiring and education, and practice budgeting and finance.

She also is responsible for the ongoing redesign of the hospital’s outpatient clinics, including restructuring the authorization process, as well as consolidating scheduling from four locations to a single centralized call center. Her work resulted in shorter appointment wait times, enabling the clinic staff to authorize and schedule more patients. Visits increased from 6,800 to 10,000 per month. She has also reorganized physicians’ billing, increasing total billing and collections 100 percent over three to four months.

As a practice management consultant, she has worked with numerous medical specialties including internal medicine, pediatrics, pulmonary and critical care medicine, gastroenterology, urology, nephrology, rheumatology, plastic and reconstructive hand surgery, orthopedics, and general surgery. She also has recruited and retained more than 30 physicians, including primary care doctors, medical specialists, department chairs, and a chief medical officer.

Villanueva also helped select and implement Electronic Health Records in various practices and has overseen physician education in evaluation and management coding and ICD-10 training.

Previously, she built a comprehensive physician network for a California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation (CDCR) hospital, and was Director of Correctional Medicine for Dignity’s Mercy Hospitals in Bakersfield. She has helped develop patient-centered medical homes in her community.

Villanueva loves music, Bass Lake, and service to her church. Her favorite time is spent with her husband and four children, and she particularly enjoys the role of Grandma.