Complex organizational administration and financial crunches can place significant demands on all of an organization’s management areas. In this context, effective program management efforts can coordinate an assortment of projects by defining program goals and establishing and monitoring a framework for program operations.
ACA approaches program management issues in connection with other management areas. We offer consulting and information technology services that enhance program management functions and address common industry needs as well as our customers’ individual needs. The following examples highlight the thoroughness and diversity of our services:
- We conduct comprehensive studies to support quality management efforts. In the course of these studies for our public welfare industry customers, we develop recommendations for improving systems of care and restructuring benefit packages.
- We help social services agencies better include un-served and under-served populations in their systems.
- Our modeling, regulatory compliance, and reporting services help our clients maintain environment-specific care definition schemes while achieving compliance through extensive cross-referencing capabilities.
Program Management in Public Welfare
In public welfare systems, program management defines what care an organization can offer and who can receive it. Once a public welfare system identifies benefit packages and covered populations, it can deliver care, and administrative and fiscal management functions can address resource management, organizational control, public accountability, and other issues.
Program management focuses on:
- Establishing a new program or structurally enhancing an existing one
- Doing performance analysis and quality management
- Assessing a program’s ability to satisfy its requirements in light of the changing care delivery environment and the dynamics of covered populations
Toward these ends, a public welfare system needs a small set of measurable characteristics that reflect program effectiveness and historic performance.
Program performance analyses must focus on parameters that are both unique to the program and that allow comparative evaluations with related programs, along with a composite assessment of their effect on “shared” consumers.
Needs in Public Welfare Program Management
To maneuver around difficulties with duplicative services and disjointed funding sources, public welfare program management faces the task of clearly defining program boundaries for covered populations and benefit packages.
For example, a social services agency usually addresses a dependent child’s needs, while a mental health agency would manage the child's behavioral health problems. Other public welfare agencies may work with the child or the child's family regarding health, social, or legal issues. These agencies could approach the child’s and the family’s case holistically, but professional experience and confidentiality guidelines often influence agencies to work independently.
Program boundaries are often inherited from their predecessors, while new programs have little capacity or time to eliminate duplicate efforts and to navigate inconsistent regulatory guidelines. In this environment, quality assurance functions may not monitor care delivery standards adequately.
ACA’s innovative approaches to program management can help your organization challenge conventional structures, if necessary, and redefine them to increase benefits for covered populations.