Leading as a Team: Building Strong Medicaid Senior Leadership

So Emily, we'll stick with you.

We'll start with what hopefully is an easy question.

Why is it important for Medicaid programs to have a high functioning senior executive team or leadership team? Why should anybody, a member, folks in the public, why should folks care?

Yeah, that's a great question.

You really cannot succeed as an individual Medicaid director or in the activities and projects you are doing and serving your members without a high functioning team.

You guys have touched on the amount of things kind of coming out Medicaid directors from a lot of federal change, state initiatives, our own running the day-to-day business.

It's like you cannot be successful if you're trying to do everything yourself or if you have a team that's not cohesive.

You know, in Medicaid, departments in various states do different things depending on the structure, but there's so much varied activity and kind of knowledge needed, everything from managed care to financing to program and policy that you have to have multiple people with these various expertise who are willing to work together.

And I think another piece that for people on the outside who always want to talk to the boss, they want to talk to the Medicaid director and the person in charge, if you have a strong leadership team, they will feel comfortable building relationships and going to those on the team who they know are responsive and knowledgeable.

And it really spreads the responsibility and the workload, but also gives people from the outside, stakeholders, members, legislators, health plans, whoever, more people that they can get direction from in the state Medicaid program.

Yeah, I appreciate that.

It's really hard for anybody to really fill the entire shoes of what we expect of as Medicaid director.

Bill, I wonder what you would add.

Why should people care?

Picking up on what Emily said, everything in Medicaid is interrelated.

And if you think that one, let's say, for example, there's a financial rule that comes out from CMS, and you think it's not going to impact managed care or eligibility, you cannot separate Medicaid out into sort of segments and treat them on their own.

Having that high-functioning team is so important because...

You need a team to understand the downstream consequences, even if you may be a leader in sort of one of those segments, understanding the interconnectedness.

And then what that means for members and for others who rely on leadership from the state is, Without that, decisions get slower, communication gets messy, there's unintended consequences, and ultimately members feel that.

And so having a high-functioning team that understands the interconnectedness results in better outcomes for members that are served by the program.

Sally, what's your thoughts?

You know, I always say this.

I know enough to be dangerous.

And so having a team under me that actually knows what they're doing is critical.

It's essential.