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Director's Message September 2, 2005
To: DHS employees From: Bryan Johnston, Interim DHS Director This week flew by. As it ends, we find ourselves worrying about our fellow Americans and contemplating how best DHS can help. If we identify a course, you'll hear about it shortly.
Meanwhile, life goes on. As your kids and mine get ready for school and we all take a day off, please allow me a few, less interesting, but important notes.
A short message to you this week and three topics:
Business Innovations: The department is launching a number of innovations to help improve our service and efficiencies with medical providers who do business with the Oregon Health Plan.
This month we are starting an electronic drug-information reference service that will help physicians as they prescribe for Health Plan patients. The service will help them determine the least costly option from the state's voluntary preferred drug list for their patients. Free electronic information downloads will be provided to providers on electronic devices like PDAs so they can access the information at the time they are prescribing for patients.
Information provided will include whether the drug is paid for by Medicaid, the drug's recommended dosing and side effects, costs, and interactions.
Other electronic innovations already underway include a new electronic billing system called First Pass, prompt electronic payments of billing claims, and automatic email updates to providers when state Medicaid rules or practices change. These improvements will serve the department well in improving our partnerships with the many medical providers we work with daily.
Prudent Expenditures: The Department of Administrative Services recently announced the relaxation of many of the restrictions on expenditures put in effect in 2003 during the depths of the state's budget problems. In response, the Cabinet incorporated DAS criteria into DHS procedures and delegated responsibility for expenditure decisions as far down in management as possible. While this will make approval of expenditures within DHS easier and faster, we need to ensure that our decisions recognize the financial constraints still facing DHS and demonstrate prudent judgment as we move forward.
Administrative expenditure budget reductions taken within the Governor's Recommended Budget (GRB), and additional actions included in the final Legislatively Adopted Budget, have significantly reduced discretionary administrative funds. This includes an across-the-board 3 percent Service and Supplies reduction incorporated in the final weeks of the Legislative Assembly.
Because of this, we all need to ensure that only necessary expenditures are authorized. This means please be careful with spending and requests for spending. Expenditures for travel, color printing, statewide conferences and the like should be scrutinized closely and based on solid justification and strategies to economize. This will require cooperation, understanding, good judgment and careful adherence to department policy and procedures. I am confident that working together we can accomplish our goals within the administrative allocations in the budget and merit the confidence and trust of the Governor, the Legislature and the public.
Labor Day: Since we are taking the day off, we should reflect on why. Labor Day is a national legal holiday that is over 100 years old. In the late 1880s, labor organizations began to lobby various state legislatures for recognition of Labor Day as an official state holiday. The first states to declare it a state holiday, in 1887, were Oregon, Colorado, New York, Massachusetts and New Jersey. Then, in 1894, Congress passed a law recognizing Labor Day as an official national holiday. Today, Labor Day is observed not only in the U.S. but also in Canada, and in other industrialized nations. It has come to be recognized in the U.S. not only as a celebration of the working class, but even more so as the unofficial end of the summer season. Labor Day is a good reminder to us all to value and respect the efforts of those around us and to be mindful of the dedication of the work we accomplish together every day. This message is intended for all department employees. Please read it electronically, if possible. Managers and supervisors are asked to share the message each week with employees who do not have email access.
If you have a disability and need this message to be provided to you in another format, please send an email to dhs.forms@state.or.us, or call (503) 947-5107. You can also fax your request to (503) 373-7690, or call (503) 947-5080 for TTY service. If you know of others who need this accommodation, please let them know it is available. |
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