Compliance... or Quality?

Transcription

Hello, and welcome to Provider Power with your host, Sarah Sherman. This is the place for IDD leaders to find solutions, support, and insights. Ready to power up your provider game? Let's get started. wanna take a minute just for this very first podcast, and thank you so much for being here with me. This podcast is my very first one. Numero uno, la primera, my first launch. And so I just want to take a second to explain why I decided to do a podcast. I work with lots and lots ofproviders who deliver all kinds of services, case management, residential, day, and everything in between. And here's what I've seen in my 30 plus years in the field.

Lots and lots of people who are working so incredibly hard to provide excellent services, run into various bumps in the road and don't know how to get around those over those bumps, or to blow up those The consequence of failing to manage those that providers don't provide the services they want to be providing. This means that providers feel frustrated, sometimes angry, sometimes lost, sometimes overwhelmed, and often completely defeated. These providers understand that if they can't provide the services in the way they're supposed to be provided, in the way the regulations require, and the way individuals tell us they want to receive services, the way families tell us they want their loved ones to be served, the way they themselves came to this field to make a difference, the result of all of that is the people they are serving don't get the lives and the outcomes they desire.

They don't get to have that big, fantastic, incredible life that we all fantasize about providing. On top of it, these staff work hard. They're exhausted. They feel like, well, this is just the way the field is. Every day I will get up, I will do my best, I will work really hard, I will work really long, I will probably miss the And I understand that my choices are either to leave the get up tomorrow and do the same thing again, hoping maybe I'll get it right this time. for so many reasons, this simply breaks my heart. Provider staff try to solve this problem by reaching out to other provider staff, only to find everyone is having the very same problems. And this experience reinforces the idea that these problems are universal and not solvable.

just get theidea that this is how things work in the field. this is a very painful place to be. Services, staff, and consequently individuals not getting what they need to My goal is to reach as many providers as possible with the information they need to provide great services, support staff, and empower individuals. And ultimately, if I do my job right, I will work myself right out of a A podcast seemed to be the easiest way to reach more providers and accomplish this goal. have the distinct honor andprivilege of working one- on- one or in large groups with so many staff every year, thousands in fact. Yet with only 365 days in each year, am limited in just how many providers I can reach. So the Provider Power podcast is here.

I'm thrilled that you are here and I look forward to your thoughts, your questions, and your insights. Leave me a comment, ask a or book some time to go deeper. that's me, that's this podcast, and now let's start talking about compliance and quality. On the topics of compliance and this is what I tend to hear and I'd like you to think about what you tend to I tend to hear, should we even be talking about compliance? I mean, what about quality? Shouldn't we be talking about quality? Why are we over here counting checked boxes? That's not enough. Shouldn't we be doing more than just checking boxes? What does a checked box mean anyway? Yeah, yeah, yeah, that's it. It should be all about quality. We should be doing better than compliance.

Quality, that's where we should be focused. Let's do that. Let's not worry about compliance and start putting our attention where it belongs, on quality. When I hear these words, I know immediately that the speaker is out of compliance I know they have no idea how to get to compliance. This is a knee- jerk response to being unable to solve the problem at hand, which is a lack of And within these words, there's even a smatter of gaslighting about compliance in general. Who are they gaslighting? Themselves. Think of it as self- soothing. The speaker knows they're supposed to be in compliance, because they don't see a clear path to getting there, they tell themselves and anyone else who will listen that everyone is focused in the wrong place. This is a smokescreen move.

And it's wasted breath because the rules of taking the cash that you have to deliver the services as required, aka in compliance. Sometimes those people who dole out millions of dollars are just so touchy. truth of the matter is quality is compliance. There is nothing, at least nothing I have found, that we define as is not actually required in federal regulation. are required to offer choice and control. are required to ensure people are healthy. We are required to facilitate relationships. We are required to coordinate employment. We are required to teach skills, including decision- making, and we're required to remove thebarriers that each individual is experiencing that they, those we serve, experience all the experiences that they desire that they have enough exposure to experiences they can figure out what they desire.

We are required to help those we to ride the full roller coaster of life rest of us are riding on. It's not their job to sit on the sidelines and wait until we can figure out if they are tall enough for this ride, if they can be locked in safely, if they will like it, if they can handle it, whatever. We're on the ride and they get to have a go on the ride. Most of us get this philosophically, we tend to give ourselves abreak when it comes to compliance and to and here's how we do it. We tend to think of as barely meeting our requirements, and we think about quality as really meeting our requirements, and this is a false idea, in our field at Compliance is really doing all of the requirements, all of the requirements, at the level required.

So what's the level required? there are two levels we have to Number one is we have to deliver the service as required every time, meaning just the way the regulations state or require every single time. level two is as the individual requires every single time. let me say it again. As required every time, we deliver the service as required every time. That means as required in the regulation every single time. as the individual requires those services be single time. tend to tell ourselves that compliance means we're barely getting by. we say compliance is just checking abox we're kidding ourselves, because compliance isn't just making sure the task is done. Compliance is making sure the task is done correctly. Quality in our world is also making sure the task is making sure the task is done correctly.

Our funders and regulators do not say to us, just do the tasks. We don't care if you do it well or not, just give it a go. A half- hearted effort is just fine. They don't say to us, hey, look at that. You did all the tasks you were supposed to do, but you did a crappy job. No worry, you'll get all your compliance points. I don't even know what a poor job looks like. You either did what was required or you didn't. Can you get better at it? Yes, you can. Getting better usually involves going deeper, working more toward those outcomes. And we'll talk about this in later podcasts. Now, sometimes people think 100% compliance is too much to ask. Maybe you're one of those people. And if you are, you are certainly not alone. Come back to the next episodes of Provider Power and we'll tackle these topics and more. See you soon!