This Is Us: Our Story

History

This is Us: Our Story

Health Choice Network (HCN) is one of the first successful health-center controlled networks; a nation-wide collaboration among health centers and partners. Through its years of growth, HCN has led the shift in cutting-edge technology that Health Center-Controlled Networks need to remain at the forefront of today’s technology-driven environment. This is our story.

1994 - Our Beginning

A Network Built on Unity

Health Choice Network (HCN) was founded in 1994 when a small group of community health centers recognized they were stronger together. By forming a network, they gained the expertise and advantages of a large health system while staying independent and rooted in their communities.

Founding Members:

Jessie Trice Community Health System
Community Health of South Florida
Helen B. Bentley Family Health Center
Camillus Health Concern
Family Health Centers of Southwest Florida

Their shared vision, and shared challenges, sparked a new model for community health collaboration. Under the leadership of Betsey K. Cooke, HCN’s founding CEO, the Network grew with a commitment to professionalism, shared resources, and advancing equitable care.

1990s - Innovating for Communities

Expanding Care within the Community

Throughout the late 1990s, HCN broadened its impact by launching community-driven programs:

Healthy Body, Healthy Soul (1998): Strengthening outreach, education, and prevention.
Jessie Trice Health Promotion Program (1999): Extending care into research, clinical trials, and screening, honoring Jessie Trice, one of the Network’s founding leaders.

These programs helped define HCN as a champion for accessible, culturally competent care.

2010s – Expanding Impact through Collaboration

A Decade of Partnerships and Growth

The 2010s were a transformative decade for HCN. We expanded strategic partnerships with organizations including Health Foundation of South Florida, OCHIN, and AllianceChicago, while strengthening care delivery through the Care Management Medical Home Center Program.

Key milestones:

2013 - Secured HRSA funding for the Quality Transformation Empowering Community Health (QTECH) grant
2014 - Formed Health Choice Care, our accountable care organization
2016 - Welcomed Alex Romillo as HCN’s new CEO
2018 - Broke ground on our headquarters renovation
2019 - Became the first fully cloud-based HCCN

Today - A National Force for Community Health

30 Years of Impact

For over 30 years, we have honored our past while shaping the future. Our Board of Directors, member health centers, partners, and staff continue to drive innovation in:

Technology & analytics
Value-based care
Clinical quality improvement
Workforce and leadership development
Financial sustainability

Guided by our founding vision, we remain committed to transforming healthcare and uplifting the communities we serve.

HCN started in 1994 when its five founding members joined together and quickly realized the advantages of a collaborative network. Twenty-five years later, HCN has grown to 30 Member Centers in 9 states across the country. Throughout its success, the Network has remained bound to its goals of improving access to quality health care for all and reducing disparities in minority and underserved communities. Watch the history of Health Choice Network unfold in this 25th Anniversary Video.

Betsey K. Cooke

HCN Founding CEO

Born in Thomasville, Georgia in 1950, Betsey Komarek Cooke was raised on Birdsong, a 500-acre nature preserve established by her parents Edwin and Elizabeth Komarek in the Florida panhandle close to the Georgia border. Her father was an ecologist and her mother a botanist. As a young child, Betsey was able to identify more than 200 different native bird songs. Ms. Cooke received her bachelor's and master’s degree in social work from Florida State University in Tallahassee and worked for eight years as the director of the Tri-County Medical Center in North Florida before coming to Miami. In 1991, she married Charlie Cooke, a professional musician she had met while on a cruise.

Ms. Cooke was the Director of Miami-Dade’s Primary Health Care Consortium in 1991 when a group of community health centers banded together and formed Health Choice Network, naming Cooke their founding President. She remained in that position for 11 years until health problems forced her to step down. In that period, she became a nationally-recognized community health advocate and a steadfast champion of affordable quality health care for underserved communities in Miami-Dade and throughout Florida. Through her tireless efforts on behalf of the uninsured, she was well-known to politicians, government health officials and business leaders from Miami to Tallahassee to Washington, D.C. Under her visionary leadership, Health Choice Network had grown to include 12 community health centers in Florida and networks in both New Mexico and Utah. Together, they served more than 200,000 needy patients annually at the time she stepped down.

It was Cooke’s vision to bring community health centers together and share the cost of common services to better serve their patients. By providing the highest level of financial services, information technology, managed care and clinical services from a centralized location, the member centers could save money while improving their level of services. Cooke received virtually every community health accolade, including the Aaron Brown Memorial Public Service Award from the National Association of Community Health Centers. In October 2005 she received the Connie and Priscilla Mack Cancer Advocacy Award. Betsey Cooke passed away from cancer on December 19, 2005.

OUR FOUNDING MEMBERS