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July 1, 2005 OPEN MINDS Announces Strong Growth & New Consulting Team Associates Gettysburg, Pennsylvania – OPEN MINDS is pleased to announce that 5 new consultants have joined the rapidly growing practice during the first four months of the year 2005. "OPEN MINDS is providing key consulting services, education, and publications in a market where deep behavioral health and social service knowledge along with a clear business perspective are highly valued," said George Carlson, Chief Operating Officer. "We are building a team of folks who can provide the right mix of skills in this changing environment. Since the beginning of the year we have brought on a very strong group, and we continue to expand to meet the needs". As part of their consulting staff, OPEN MINDS has engaged:
M. Colleen Elmer, Senior Consultant, brings seventeen years of experience as an administrator, educator, and clinician. For the past seven years she has served in the health care industry, providing expertise on compliance issues, organizational structure and leadership, strategic planning and management, and program design. In addition, she has assisted small businesses in all phases of start-up including industry analysis, strategic planning, marketing, and sales/financial forecasting. Ms. Elmer started her career as a behavioral health clinician working in both the geriatric and child welfare arenas. Subsequently, she served in senior management positions within the long-term care industry. One of her greatest achievements was leading a team in developing a strategic plan to diversify their assisted living service offerings from a single product into a three-tier, six-product system. The detailed strategic plan led to a seamless implementation increasing both occupancy and the private pay ratio. Niels T. Eskelsen, MBA, CPA, Senior Consultant, specializes in strategic business planning, management consulting, business and revenue development, business merger and acquisition, organizational reengineering, interim general and financial management. He has an extensive hands-on background in business management and consultation with over 30 years of experience in health care and industry organizations as an executive and business consultant. Most recently, Mr. Eskelsen was the Vice-President-Shareholder Criterion Health, Inc., Redmond, WA, where he was an original shareholder that co-founded this management services organization with annual fee income in excess of $1 million. Vickie C. Franchino, Senior Consultant, has twenty years of experience in business administration, development, marketing, and consulting. In recent positions Ms. Franchino has led marketing initiatives for start-up community healthcare providers and a local trade association. Prior to that, Ms. Franchino serviced in various marketing and management roles within OPEN MINDS and for one of the largest hospital systems in the nation. Louise R. Gregg, MHA, Consultant, brings her experience as a health care manager for behavioral health organizations. Her experience in the course of managing a four county network involved development, interpretation, and negotiation of public and private health insurance contracts and other collaborative agreements. She has also provided counseling services for both mental health and substance abuse clients and managed successful behavioral health programs. She has developed a preventive cardiology program for a hospital system and initiated and supervised TANF programs, including outreach and speaking engagements to educate interdepartmental teams, governmental agencies, and community resources. In addition, Ms. Gregg has written educational articles for behavioral health. She is an author, reviewer, and co-chair for the Workgroup for Electronic Data Interchange (WEDI) Strategic National Implementation Process (SNIP). Mike Myrick, Senior Consultant, is a seasoned professional with over 25 years of information technology and business experience including 12 years focused on the health care and human services field. He has in-depth experience working with behavioral health, addiction treatment, and managed care organizations. Mr. Myrick assists clients in developing functional requirements, system selection and implementation, process review and improvement, interim technology and operational positions and custom software development. He has particular expertise in Business Intelligence including data mining, data warehouse development, custom report development and data analysis. Daniel Y. Patterson, M.D., MPH, Senior Associate, has had a 35 year distinguished career in managed care and managed behavioral health care. At age 31 he became the first director of the government's HMO service having helped write HMO legislation and participated in an HMO task force headed by Dr. Paul Ellwood (the founder of the HMO movement). Dr. Patterson created managed behavioral health care programs both at the 100,000 member staff model HMO (Group Health Association of Washington, DC), and at a group model HMO serving 150,000 members (Kaiser Permanente of the Mid-Atlantic region). He served as the president of the 100 physician medical group for the former and served as a member of the medical board of directors and as an Associate Medical Director of the latter. He was the founding medical director of a legacy company, which became ValueOptions. Clients during his tenure at APM/Value Behavioral Health included IBM, Chevron, Shell Oil Co., Harris Corporation and Wells Fargo. Dr. Patterson returned to clinical practice seeing more than 10,000 patients, 80% of whom were managed care. Beginning in 1995 he served as the Medical Director to a 50-physician multispecialty medical group in Wilmington, NC. He has been a consultant to NCQA and to numerous HMOs and MBOs. He has been on the clinical faculty of Johns Hopkins, Georgetown, George Washington, and the University of North Carolina medical schools. He has authored three chapters in published books on managed behavioral care and numerous articles in the area. Dr. Patterson is board certified and a Distinguished Life Fellow of the American Psychiatric Association. For more information, contact George Carlson, Chief Operating Officer, OPEN MINDS, 163 York Street, Gettysburg, Pennsylvania 17325, 717-334-1329, fax: 717-334-0538, E-mail: gcarlson@openminds.com, web site: www.openminds.com Shopping Cart | Contact Us | Home
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