Transcript - slide 12

Interviewer:  Could you give us some information or tips on how another agency might learn from your experiences and do things perhaps the same [or] perhaps differently from what Mill Creek has done?

Danny Cowart:  If I would have one piece of advice, it depends upon what your monitoring agency will allow you to do. I would get one facility very solid. By facility, I mean a staging area and use it as the pilot. We started out very large, very quickly, and that has created a lot of personnel problems.

I think that we are over that crisis mode, but I wouldn't start out too large too quickly. One thing that we did that I think is almost imperative, is that once that you have identified that this is what your core value is, that people with disabilities will be valued as typical people in the community then don't waiver from it.

You are going to run into transportation barriers. You are going to run into having to work with parent attitudes. You are going to have staff turnover. Stay the course, because in the long run you will be proud of what you have established. I am afraid that if anything of value would come that easy, then everybody would do it. I hope that everybody does do it, but the truth of the matter is [that] you may be a pilot for [people] to look at in your area. So once that is established, just stay with it.

Interviewer:  That's a great piece of advice. I am almost hard pressed to come up with any other editorial comment, but do you have anything else you would like to share with our listeners.

Danny Cowart:  From time to time on our financial end, things start getting pretty tight. We have found that when the quality of [our] communication with parents, prompting, and paperwork were in line; the operational issues fell in line also. The quality produced [so] that people wanted our service.

We developed a “stop-doing” list. [Doing the paperwork] is ongoing. We started developing direct-care staff that knew what they were documenting, because the MR/DD waiver, obviously with Medicaid, is documentation driven. So that was a key piece. As we developed stop-doing lists like that, we found out that we could actually spend more time with individuals with disabilities and be more creative, rather than in a panic mode at the end of month for Medicaid. It has become somewhat more enjoyable as we went through it.

Interviewer:  I can't thank you enough for joining us today. I am sure that you would be willing to entertain e-mail questions if someone perhaps had a question and could send you e-mail. Would that be fine?

Danny Cowart:  That would be fine.

Interviewer:  Thank you so much.

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