Director's Message

May 18, 2007

To: All DHS employees

From: Bruce Goldberg, M.D., Director

"The significant problems we have cannot be solved with the same level of thinking with which we created them."
~Albert Einstein

Oregon has a reputation for being in the vanguard of providing community-based care for seniors and people with disabilities. Most other states are just now starting to go where we've been for more than a decade.

We're a leader in providing community-based care because 15-20 years ago we looked ahead and realized we needed to do things differently. We found that people experienced better outcomes and costs were lower when individuals could receive assistance with daily living in smaller, local settings near their families and friends rather than in institutions.

And now we have the opportunity to do even more. We have just been awarded a five-year $114 million demonstration grant from the federal Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services so that even more Oregonians can transfer from institutions to smaller, home- and community-based care settings.

This grant not only is an acknowledgement of the good work Oregon is doing, it also helps build capacity throughout the state to address the care needs of an aging population and, most importantly, it supports continued innovating thinking.

How we assist people is very different today than it was 15-20 years ago, and it will undoubtedly be different from the services and treatments we will be providing in another 15-20 years.

We must never become complacent and assume that our current way of doing things should stay the same. Instead, we must continue to take a forward and innovative approach to providing effective and efficient client services. To do that, we need to be open to new technologies, new knowledge and new ways of thinking.

I'm very pleased that our work has merited this CMS demonstration grant, and I am confident our staff will use this funding to continue developing innovative methods of delivering services to Oregonians.

On a similar note, I also want to acknowledge the good work of the many DHS employees and partners who made our presentations before the Ways and Means Committee a success during the past few months. Thanks to your hard work, we were able to provide a clear picture of a very complex agency and budget. No other state agency spends as much time in front of Ways and Means, and no other agency is so directly important to so many people. Thank you.

To provide feedback email: DHS.Directorsoffice@state.or.us

This message is intended for all department employees. Please read it electronically, if possible. Managers and supervisors are asked to share the message each week with employees who do not have email access.