As Opportunity Village rolled through the month of August and into September, I continue to be amazed at the amount of change we are facing and the pace at which our organization continues to adjust.

We continue to adapt to a new world living with managed care. For the most part, the transition — although a steep learning curve — continues to have little negative impact on the people we support. Although we have noted an isolated issue or two, those situations have improved significantly. From most of the feedback I receive, we are in a better situation with our billing than most other organizations.

We also continue to work through all the details of our recently-announced restructuring of the services department.

We provided new and existing supervisors significant amounts of training on a variety of topics in an effort to ensure staff are as comfortable in their role as possible.

The human resources department also took several steps to improve the hiring and onboarding process to ensure we have quality employees caring for your loved ones.

Another continuing effort is assisting folks we support in moving from the RCF cottages on our Clear Lake campus into community homes, as required by new federal regulations).

The final two homes have been identified. The first is already under construction and the other should be shortly. We anticipate the completion of this monumental transition by the end of 2016.

We also continue to ramp up our community employment efforts in numerous ways, hiring new employees and moving staff into job development and job coaching positions (some from traditional day services roles).

We also continue to look for and develop unique business opportunities or partnerships, as well as pursue training and new strategies for staff in these areas.

All of these efforts will continue to increase as we pursue compliance with the new federal regulations concerning segregated services. All of this makes it even more important for our organization to continue making progress toward finalizing our plans for a productive use for the Clear Lake campus facilities moving forward.

As you will note from the many other stories in this newsletter, we have many, many positive things going on at Opportunity Village. We continue to experience a great deal of success despite all that changes around us.

This is a huge testament to the incredibly dedicated and talented staff we have, as well as your loved ones who inspire us to do our best each and every day.

Jeff Nichols
641-355-1210
jnichols@oppvill.org