Just some rambling

First off, sorry I've been away. I've not abandoned the blog (by any means)- work has been horribly busy and by the time I get home? I'm spent of all things HHSC.

I will say that with the session going on, there's no better time for those of us in the filed who are seeing the destruction that has become of this agency to SPEAK OUT! Write letters! Send your representative the link to this blog if you'd like- anything to get the word out.

I also want to do a post in the future of what the actual personal toll all this has taken on the actual employees. We all know the effects that the changes have had on our clients, but what about those of us who have served the agency and it's clients well for years- that have had to make huge personal changes due to what has gone on. Some have left the agency and taken a pay cut just to ensure they had a job (because they got a layoff notice). Some have sold homes, cars, cut out other various expenses (vacations, etc) because they thought they were losing their jobs. You have employees who, due to the stress, have developed medical problems that is directly due to the conditions under which they are now working. Stress kills. Then you have those employees that the agency really couldn't afford to lose, but have retired and NOT come back because it wasn't an agency they believed in anymore. Many of our offices are now short staffed with very few tenured workers left and the rest are temporary employees who are thrown into the fire and expected to be able to grasp the policy and see the full caseload with little or no protected plans in place. This overwhelms new people to the point that THEY then leave.

And now, they are expanding TIERS? So you will have small rural offices that have always been able to truly help their clients, see many appointments per day, etc- and now? With TIERS? That level of service will go way down. For HHSC "Powers that Be" to continue to act as though TIERS is the God-send of human services are just giving the public lip service. The amount of money that has been POURED into TIERS still has not produced the end product as promised. I'm sure most of us either work in TIERS already, or know a worker who is in ART and hears the stories of a "no show" taking an hour to process, or the simple procedure of correcting a case takes forever......this? this is client service? Insane.

So in offices that are seeing 15+ clients per day? What do they think will happen to the "almighty lead time" when the offices rollout into TIERS? If that office can only see 4-5 to account for the learning curve, it pushes the lead time even FURTHER. Which directly conflicts with Federal regulations. Is FNS doing anything at all?

Rumor has it that the Pilot area sees upwards of 17-18 appointments per day in TIERS. Can anyone verify? I've also heard that they are also getting massive amounts of overtime. So when those in charge point to the pilot area and how many they are seeing as the "model to follow"- they leave out the fact that it's not being done in an 8 hour day. How about those employees that have actual "lives" outside of the office? Are the rollout offices supposed to tell these employees that their families, their children, their outside responsibilities are no longer important? I guess they could, and more people could just quit.