Director's Message

December 2, 2005

To: DHS employees

From: Dr. Bruce Goldberg, DHS Director

"It is better to light one candle than to curse the darkness." Ancient Chinese proverb

As we approach the winter solstice and the longest night of the year, light becomes increasingly important and precious. Over the past month, I have met many DHS employees and experienced first-hand the many ways in which our work brightens people's lives. It's wonderful to be part of an organization that does so.

This week's message is devoted to the Director's Excellence award winners for the third quarter, 2005. These awards recognize excellence among us -- those who have taken on challenges above and beyond their normal work duties or who have taken a creative or innovative approach to solving an issue.

Please take a moment and read about our colleagues and join me in recognizing their good works. By doing so, we honor not only them, but also our collective efforts. Their work helps us move together toward a brighter future.

Electronic Disability Determination Process

Gloria Berning and the Disability Determination Services staff were recognized for successfully converting to a new electronic business process, saving time and resources. This was accomplished while simultaneously working on Social Security Administration (SSA) initiatives to reduce the number of pending claims, assisting the state of Idaho with its SSA workload, and providing outstanding service and timely decisions to Oregon citizens. The DDS staff -- numbering nearly 200 -- has been creative in finding solutions to problems in the new electronic environment.

First Pass Initiative Metrics
Database analyst Sue Brown and research analyst Russell Byers were recognized for work they did as an interdisciplinary team to design and routinely publish 14 business process analysis unit reports in a highly automated fashion. Over 35 new performance metrics were created that describe key transactional activities relating to processing and paying for Medicaid services. This value-added activity provided DHS managers and staff with the reliable information required to effectively manage program budgets by the quick identification of aberrant or unanticipated payment trends. Among the benefits to the department for this work include: weekly and monthly summary reporting of all Medicaid expenditures that are processed or passed through MMIS, various statistics and derived calculations involving unique recipient, provider, and claims counts aggregated by provider claim and type, and many others. These reports are increasing the department's analytic capacity and promote the effective stewardship of DHS program resources.

Vocational Rehabilitation Leadership

Cheryl Furrer, OVRS training specialist, was recognized for her outstanding leadership in carrying out statewide in-service trainings, coordinated employer training, and staff training. What she accomplished included working with Western Oregon University to offer an on-campus course on rehabilitation policy for graduate credit. She also coordinated another new counselor training academy, among other accomplishments. Cheryl has helped the department move forward the vocational rehabilitation training arena, making great strides in carrying out positive, effective and innovative ideas.

Making a Difference

One of my charges as your new director is to help better tell the story of what DHS does, to describe human service needs in this state, and to discuss how we work to help meet those. The department took the first step in better telling its story this year by launching a "Making a Difference initiative" -- the first time department staff across all clusters worked cooperatively together to create a set of documents that share information about what the department does to help people statewide. A total of 36 county fact sheets were developed, highlighting work in each local area. More than 40 personal stories were told -- at least one for each county.

Stories have been used in the news media statewide, appeared on the State of Oregon's Web site and have been used by the Governor's office. The Making a Difference materials have also begun to be shared with legislators, local community leaders, and other partners.

Those recognized from the Office of Public Affairs and Web team staff included: Jim Sellers, Nading Jelsing, Patricia Feeny, Janice Hoffman, Ed Kramer, Gary Whitehouse, Bonnie Widerburg, Trish Neiworth, Theresa Norman, Genene Valleau, Becki Trachsel, Amy Klaus, Pam Rouske, and Debra Aljets. The department review team included: Gwen Grams, Vic Todd, Fariborz Pakseresht, Sue Ford, Sandy Wood, Katy King, Marc Overbeck, and Jane-Ellen Weidanz. SDA Managers instrumental in making this effort happen included: Lee Colemen, Jerry Burns, Jeanette Burket, Marco Benavides, John Radich, Jerry Waybrant, Richard Whitwer, Doug Mares, Rene DuBoise, Pat Carey, Denise Rhode, Kim Carnine, Todd Siex, Marge Reinhart and Kevin Aguirre. Many others contributed to the effort including Tracey Strohmeyer and Mary Lou Ritter, AAA managers and field and program staff. Congratulations to you all for a real team effort and accomplishing another first for the department.

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.