Texas Health Services Authority Meets Aug. 21 with Its Sunset Review Pending

The nonprofit Texas created to move patient records between hospitals holds a quarterly board meeting by video Aug. 21, with a review of whether it should keep existing now under way at the Legislature’s Sunset Advisory Commission. The item appears on the agenda as one word: “Sunset.” There is no physical meeting room.

The Texas Health Services Authority is an odd creature. The Legislature chartered it in 2007 as a public nonprofit corporation to build and run health information exchange across the state, and the governor appoints its board with Senate confirmation. But it is not a state agency, it says so plainly in its own filings, and it takes no state appropriation. It took in about $2.2 million in 2024, three quarters of that from a contract with the Health and Human Services Commission and most of the rest from subscriber fees, with three full-time employees.

The Sunset commission has the authority on its list of agencies under review for the 2027 legislative session. The authority filed its self-evaluation last September; no Sunset staff report has been published yet, and the commission’s tentative calendar puts public testimony in November and a decision the following month. This is not the first pass. A 2015 review produced a law that would have cut the authority loose as a fully private entity in 2021, and a 2019 law repealed that expiration and reset the clock to 2027 instead.

What the board actually oversees is plumbing. Its network, HIETexas, carries two services worth knowing: one sends hospitals and nursing homes an automatic alert when a patient they are responsible for turns up in somebody else’s emergency room, and another lets responders look up medications and allergies for people displaced by a declared disaster. A separate voluntary program certifies Texas health organizations against privacy and security standards. The board also votes on minutes and third-quarter financial statements and hears a chief executive’s report.

The meeting has no physical location — the notice lists the address only as “virtual only.” Watch what the chief executive says about the review, since it is the first public airing since the self-evaluation.

Meeting at a glance

Board of directors

• Shannon Calhoun, Goliad — chair; chief revenue officer, IV Ensure.
• Kenneth James, Volente — vice chair; health plan operations executive.
• Salil Deshpande, Houston — treasurer; managed care chief medical officer.
• Victoria Ai Linh Bryant, Houston — pharmacist; caregiving company founder.
• Lacey Fails, Hollywood Park — hospital physician recruitment director.
• Calvin Green, Elgin — ex officio; health commission deputy executive commissioner.
• Jeffrey Hoogheem, Austin — ex officio; state health preparedness director.
• Jonathan Sandstrom Hill, Lakeway — general counsel, commercial investment firm.
• Kourtney Kouns, Seymour — regional health system executive.
• Jerome Lisk, Tyler — physician.
• Leticia Rodriguez, Monahans — chief executive, Ward Memorial Hospital.
• Cynthia Stinson, Lumberton — registered nurse.
• Wes Tidwell, Round Rock — hospital system senior vice president.
• Carlos Vital, Friendswood — allergy and asthma physician.

The roster follows the authority’s leadership page, last updated in February 2026. The authority’s own pages give its board size two ways, as twelve members and as fourteen; its Sunset filing reconciles this as twelve voting directors plus two ex officio. One ex officio term is listed in that filing as having run through 2025, so at least one seat may have turned over since. No secretary is identified. Chief executive: Phil Beckett, in the job since January 2025.