Yahooooo the Kansas legislature passed a budget that reinstates the 10% Medicaid cuts effective July 1, 2010. A long 6 months of patience and persistence have paid off. Even with the cuts, we have supported more people to leave institutions this year than last. Amazing work everyone!
Of course, our work is far from done. There were many lessons over the past 6 months and many I am still digesting. The greatest gift has been the way everyone stuck together and focused on what we do best. In tough times there are a lot of trite sayings that get thrown around...when times are tough the tough get going...people are like tea bags, they get stronger in hot water. I know, I know, I've put my own little spin on those gems, but you get what I mean.
This has truly been the greatest challenge I have had as a business owner. It may even be the first time I've so strongly identified myself as a business owner. It has helped me pull together with our team and identify where we are heading. Our number one goal is to diversify our funding. We will continue to assist people using Medicaid to become independent and we will focus on people with private insurance and other funds. We have a model that works for people and saves money, it's a winning formula for everyone.
Our second focus is to put resources into training and maintaining the best case managers, transitional living specialists and therapists in the nation. Over the next few months we will be rolling out a whole new transitional living specialist retention process and training curriculum.
And finally, our focus on customer service will be ramped up tenfold. We want to work with people who desire to work on becoming as fully included in the community as desired and decreasing the amount of paid staff in their lives. We want people to have strong, rich relationships with people they can care about and who care about them.
So, thanks for hanging on for the ride and hang on, because we have more hills and loops ahead.
