While working for the Commonwealth of PA, I got to know Pat Brady and Brian McGuckin and appreciated their business savvy and expertise they brought to guiding the Commonwealth through the complexities of implementing an assessment. When there were some changes to the contracting entities for Commonwealth consultants, Cassandra Ly and I approached Pat and Brian about joining Sellers Dorsey. Cassandra and I both started on the same day working for Sellers Dorsey.
I worked with the firm’s technical and financial experts to implement programs that impacted quality, access, and affordable health care. I gained experience in business process improvement by overseeing state-based divisions, for a previous employer, who was always looking for ways to improve efficiency and reduce costs.
States, hospitals and hospital systems, universities, and academic medical centers, and I had lots of internal clients too!
I had spent the majority of my time on various client engagements, helping them develop and improve their quality initiatives. I also facilitated our internal Business Process Improvement (BPI) workgroup, and I had spent time evaluating project management software solutions, developing standardized processes and reporting, and assisting in the development of a skills database. This was such an exciting time for Sellers Dorsey! We had grown so quickly so it was important that we worked toward creating smoother processes and more efficient workflows in support of our overall business growth.
I appreciated the ability to work on projects from a national perspective. I enjoyed getting to know clients and colleagues across the firm and using my knowledge and expertise to complement the talented team members that Sellers Dorsey had built. In my role, I had thoroughly enjoyed working with our colleagues across the nation that had a deep understanding of Medicaid, financing, policy, and operational projects. We were successful in navigating the ever-changing health care landscape in both the public and private sectors. I also enjoyed working in various state environments that required us to be innovative in our solutions to meet state and regional needs as well as federal regulations. From a quality perspective, there was never a one size fits all approach to navigating this changing environment. This made working for Sellers Dorsey so intriguing.
Five years ago no one knew what value-based care was. Now mostly everyone who worked in health care knew what this was. Everyone agreed that health care costs were on an unsustainable growth trajectory and therefore there was an attempt to shift the risk to providers and make them more accountable for driving more efficient and coordinated care, improved quality, and better patient outcomes.
I believed this was an incredible time of innovation in health care, especially in terms of health care financing, shifting to a culture of shared accountability for patient and community health care outcomes and cost was really a journey. The value-based care road was long and winding, but I thought Sellers Dorsey was positioned well in the market to help with that journey.