James Priester

• Developed, implemented, revised, and evaluated policies and procedures.
• Implemented new policies and educated staff on changes.
• Coached and trained newly hired employees so that each understood job responsibilities and requirements of positions.
• Explored recent MCO's to approach regarding delivery of service and contractual services provided
• Utilized intra-agency referrals to ensure continuity of care
• Facilitated and assisted hiring personnel by interviewing applicants

For many clinicians, it is not unusual to be affiliated with groups as they manage their own practice. The same applies to nurse practioneers, physicians, physical and speech therapists. I pursued this avenue while having my own practice. The advent and growth of managed care was taking a toll on my solo practice, as it had with other clinicians.

I had been a listed provider with Cleveland Clinic, Qual Choice (University Hospitals), CIGNA, Humana, Medicare, John Hancock, Medical Mutual, Beech Street, AETNA, Human Affairs International, Equitable, Occidental, Prudential, as well as many more.

During that time, I had been recruited with the Marymount Behavioral to be part of their quality assurance program and monitoring system. This was comprised of a panel of eight Cleveland providers from different clinical perspectives to review and consult on challenging cases of others.

• Formulated treatment plan strategies with multidisciplinary teams to provide comprehensive and continuous care plan.
• Performed short-term therapy, provided education and responded to crisis situations.
• Helped clients develop new coping mechanisms and techniques to drive behavior modification.
• Coordinated individualized discharge plans to manage safe transition back into community and home environments.
• Trained in EMDR to address more complex aspects of PTSD, maintaining education to retain licensure and comply with national associations requirements

First clinical mental health position. This period of time was used to develop additional skills and academic pursuits. A two year post graduate in Gestalt psychology was pursued as well as certification (now lapsed) in Sex Therapy, Cognitive Psychology as well as my Phd.

The setting allowed me to the freedom to gather data and develop phenomenological study on panic disorder as well as developing a group setting for additional treatment of panic disordered individuals and to use the group as extra support of behavioral strategies in overcoming this self-reinforcing malady.

Due to my introduction to emergency mental health training, I was often called to address, assess and aid in bank robberies and other situations that would impact worker safety and control (witness death, accidents or traumatic events such as electrocution due to faulty wiring).

The practice was sold as the owner (Elaine Hammon) was presenting with life threatening medical complications.

Established broaden protocol to include and address mental health emergencies as the facility and broadened services to include psychiatric care. We also expanded adoption, in limited situations, of immediate situations. Additionally, we were able to reach out and assist with offering occupational health care by coordinating with physical and occupational therapies and mental health evaluation. If appropriate, continued follow-up would be offered or established within our network.

Additionally, during this time we expanded the service providers and had grown from 4 providers to 8 within the first 10 months with ACMC.

A real challenge was trying to balance the need to cover traditional social work health care needs as well as the more specific and demanding psychiatric health care, both in- and out-patient.

Upon obtaining MSW, I pursued a position with this facility to provide these duties in social work:

* outreach to follow-up of those within a catchment area

that would insure coverage of all services

* provide hypnotherapy, once trained, for medical pain

management

* provide family education regarding short term and long

term care needs

* evaluate family and/or spousal adjustments to physical

needs during rehabilitation, such as cognitive disabilities

and education on approaches to aid in recovery,

* stress relief and monitoring of major health care provider

as this was defined by research as major contributor of

marital complications with marital system,

* utilize sex therapy with patients adjusting to losses or

limits,

* conferring with psychiatry regarding medication

compliance and outcomes.