To Mendocino County Board of Supervisors
My name is Sarah Walsh. I work with Anchor Health Management. I also have family members that seek services through the county SMH system. I have worked with County Mental Health since 2001 in some capacity or another, and therefore have experience both professionally and personally in the BH system.
I am here to address a few concerns I have with the Board of Supervisors repeated claims regarding the data they say they do not receive from Anchor Health. Anchor Health has gone out of its way to provide the information to the members of the Board. We participated in an ad hoc committee to provide client outcomes and taken individual requests from Board members. Furthermore, we’ve listened to feedback from the community and incorporated their input into the reports. We submit reports to the County annually, quarterly, AND monthly, at the bare minimum, all of which include client outcomes. Despite what the Board has repeatedly claims, those outcomes are NOT reached by a sampling method, but take the whole population we serve into account, with the sole exception of client satisfaction surveys. Board members espouse “Transparency!” as justification to continue to disbelieve what is being presented. It is disingenuous to not only hard-working staff, but the constituents you serve.
During the ad hoc I participated in with members of the Board, we provided not only the summary of the outcomes, but the actual excel report itself so that the board could confirm sampling methods hadn’t been used to skew the data. Still, the Board continues to claim that outcomes were and are never provided. This is false. Even after that ad hoc, the Board researched what outcomes other counties report on and couldn’t locate a county that reports the type of intensive data that you require of AHM. And has gone so far as to suggest that we press other counties to report similarly to ensure there would be data for comparison. With this and the derogatory manner in which the board speaks to the public about AHMs provided data, one could reasonably conclude that the Board has an agenda in this matter, and no amount of requested data will suffice. However, if no agenda exists, then ignorance on how the system works IS the only other line of reasoning I can come up with.
Our county mental health system is robust comparatively, and without the creative thinking of Camille, Dan and Tim to maximize the dollars that have been allocated to this county, your adult services would be confined to just the mandated services, which only include medication management and crisis - what sort of outcomes do you think that would result in? In reality, those three individuals are the architects of the current specialty mental health system in Mendocino County.
Your lack of understanding to how the system works was very apparent a few weeks ago when you took RCS out of the system equation, without a transition period. Anchor Health works collaboratively with not only the providers within the system, but also with outside agencies and members of the community. We have a “no wrong door” policy and meet weekly to ensure that, when an agency may be struggling, there is another agency ready to serve the client. When you remove an agency from that collaboration, the system breaks down, and suddenly the left hand does not know what the right hand is doing, leaving the clients to suffer. Currently county BH is not equipped to take on a piecemeal system.
We have received exceptional grades not only from the California External Quality Review Organizations yearly review, but also from the triennial state audits. I think this is because at Anchor Health we work as a full functioning team where we are allowed to disagree with each other and have meaningful conversations on how best to meet state/county guidelines AND provide the best we can for our clients and community.
At the last Board meeting Dr Miller tried to tell you about the new changes with CALAIM and what that means for the ASO. AHM is fully aware of what it means. We had already been in discussions with Dr Miller about whether the ASO would still be an appropriate option for this county with the new state structure AND we were already preparing that this could be a transition year just in case. Our team at Anchor Health feel we accomplished the tasks we were contracted to do to help the County.
Are we a perfect system? No, but we strive to be, and we are a much better County than most. You can thank Tim, Dan, AND Camille, who especially goes out of her way to ensure that` Anchor Health and the providers are doing ALL that they can to serve Mendocino County beneficiaries, even in the rural areas. Again, our system is not perfect, but it’s not bad, not even remotely.
To Mendocino County Board of Supervisors
My name is Sarah Walsh. I work with Anchor Health Management. I also have family members that seek services through the county SMH system. I have worked with County Mental Health since 2001 in some capacity or another, and therefore have experience both professionally and personally in the BH system.
I am here to address a few concerns I have with the Board of Supervisors repeated claims regarding the data they say they do not receive from Anchor Health. Anchor Health has gone out of its way to provide the information to the members of the Board. We participated in an ad hoc committee to provide client outcomes and taken individual requests from Board members. Furthermore, we’ve listened to feedback from the community and incorporated their input into the reports. We submit reports to the County annually, quarterly, AND monthly, at the bare minimum, all of which include client outcomes. Despite what the Board has repeatedly claims, those outcomes are NOT reached by a sampling method, but take the whole population we serve into account, with the sole exception of client satisfaction surveys. Board members espouse “Transparency!” as justification to continue to disbelieve what is being presented. It is disingenuous to not only hard-working staff, but the constituents you serve.
During the ad hoc I participated in with members of the Board, we provided not only the summary of the outcomes, but the actual excel report itself so that the board could confirm sampling methods hadn’t been used to skew the data. Still, the Board continues to claim that outcomes were and are never provided. This is false. Even after that ad hoc, the Board researched what outcomes other counties report on and couldn’t locate a county that reports the type of intensive data that you require of AHM. And has gone so far as to suggest that we press other counties to report similarly to ensure there would be data for comparison. With this and the derogatory manner in which the board speaks to the public about AHMs provided data, one could reasonably conclude that the Board has an agenda in this matter, and no amount of requested data will suffice. However, if no agenda exists, then ignorance on how the system works IS the only other line of reasoning I can come up with.
Our county mental health system is robust comparatively, and without the creative thinking of Camille, Dan and Tim to maximize the dollars that have been allocated to this county, your adult services would be confined to just the mandated services, which only include medication management and crisis - what sort of outcomes do you think that would result in? In reality, those three individuals are the architects of the current specialty mental health system in Mendocino County.
Your lack of understanding to how the system works was very apparent a few weeks ago when you took RCS out of the system equation, without a transition period. Anchor Health works collaboratively with not only the providers within the system, but also with outside agencies and members of the community. We have a “no wrong door” policy and meet weekly to ensure that, when an agency may be struggling, there is another agency ready to serve the client. When you remove an agency from that collaboration, the system breaks down, and suddenly the left hand does not know what the right hand is doing, leaving the clients to suffer. Currently county BH is not equipped to take on a piecemeal system.
We have received exceptional grades not only from the California External Quality Review Organizations yearly review, but also from the triennial state audits. I think this is because at Anchor Health we work as a full functioning team where we are allowed to disagree with each other and have meaningful conversations on how best to meet state/county guidelines AND provide the best we can for our clients and community.
At the last Board meeting Dr Miller tried to tell you about the new changes with CALAIM and what that means for the ASO. AHM is fully aware of what it means. We had already been in discussions with Dr Miller about whether the ASO would still be an appropriate option for this county with the new state structure AND we were already preparing that this could be a transition year just in case. Our team at Anchor Health feel we accomplished the tasks we were contracted to do to help the County.
Are we a perfect system? No, but we strive to be, and we are a much better County than most. You can thank Tim, Dan, AND Camille, who especially goes out of her way to ensure that` Anchor Health and the providers are doing ALL that they can to serve Mendocino County beneficiaries, even in the rural areas. Again, our system is not perfect, but it’s not bad, not even remotely.
Sarah Walsh
AHM Employee and Private Citizen