Well, it’s been a few weeks now since we found out that our livelihood is changing. Due to changes within the Medicaid system in Iowa our jobs are likely to be taken over by a managed care organization. The organization has been contracting with us since April to do case management for their Medicaid funded members. It is my understanding that they feel they can control costs and improve outcomes and supply themselves with more accurate data if they use their own case managers. I work for a county case management agency that has always received the highest marks and very limited corrective actions for many years while providing excellent support for members. As a result, this change in course was shocking.
As recently as November 2016, our director was assured by this MCO that contracting with local case management agencies was the best move they had made when being chosen one of the three MCOs to manage Iowa’s “Medicaid Modernization”. Then we found out about three weeks ago, via news media first, that the MCO was going to move some members in house. No timeline was given, and no set number or type of clients was given. In the weeks since, no real good information has come forth. More like radio silence except for one recent email which did give a basic time line that whatever they have in the works, they want to have completed by the end of June 2017. That’s not a lot of time when it comes to transferring as many as 12,000 members from one case manager to another.
This MCO is in the active hiring stage, and many of us have applied and interviewed. Most of us has not heard one way or the other at this point. In the mean time I am sending out resumes and applying online in a somewhat haphazard way hoping that I would get hired by this MCO and that would make short work of it.
Jobs are out there all over the place, the problem for me are two fold. I live on a family farmstead and don’t want to move unless it’s a last resort, and two, the income we make now can be hard to match, as many similar jobs in my field don’t pay as well.
I am more that willing to look into other opportunities, other fields, but that comes with the issue of different experience which may not match well with mine. So I am also putting trust in God that his plan is better than whatever I can think of and hope it all goes well.
I never imagined when I took this job almost 12 years ago that I would be looking for something else. Especially not under these circumstances. Thankfully we have some money in the bank in case things get stretched out, but it’s not going to last a long time, so again, I pray things will turn out soon.
It sounds a little after the fact, but remember that nothing is guaranteed. You have a job you are sure you are going to retire from and suddenly it’s gone. It happens every day, just to other people; then sometime it could be you.
Until next time, when ever that is.
Not Much To Talk About 