VRTAC-QM Manager Minute: Putting Customers First-How Utah Makes Rapid Engagement Work!

Aaron Thompson, Assistant Division Director for the Utah State Office of Rehabilitation, joins Carol Pankow on this 14th episode of Manager Minute to talk about how Utah is making rapid engagement work. Carol has discussed this on two previous podcasts; however, each VR agency has tackled this differently. It is intriguing and exciting to hear about how different VR programs are confronting the dilemma facing VR on declining applications and consumer engagement. 

Learn about Utah's “Back to Basics” approach, how they implemented this approach and how they involve their counselors and customers.

From Utah's unique Performance Dashboards and Blueprint Systems, there is so much to learn about how Utah is making rapid engagement work.

Listen Here

You can find out more about VRTAC-QM on the web at:

https://www.vrtac-qm.org/

Full Transcript

VRTAC-QM Manager Minute: Putting Customers First-How Utah Makes Rapid Engagement Work!

{Music}

Speaker1: Manager Minute brought to you by the VRTAC for Quality Management. Conversations powered by VR, one manager at a time, one minute at a time. Here is your host, Carol Pankow.

Carol: Well, welcome to the manager minute. I am so fortunate to have Aaron Thompson, assistant division director for the Utah State Office of Rehabilitation, joining me in the studio today. So, Aaron, how are things going in Utah?

Aaron: Well, first, thank you for having me. And things are going pretty well in Utah. I think we're spending a lot of focus. We're going to be talking about getting back to basics and really kicking off a lot of the initiatives that we have in the works.

Carol: Cool. Good to hear. I can't wait to get into it. So, Aaron, I know you've been with the agency for over 17 years. You've held a variety of positions from counselor to supervisor to district director, field services director to where you are today. And I know you've seen and done a lot in your career, which really leads us to this very important topic we're going to discuss today. The idea is really called rapid engagement, and I know I've discussed this on two previous podcasts. However, each VR agency has tackled this in a different way, which is super intriguing and exciting when tackling this dilemma that's facing VR on declining applications and declining eligibility. So VR is a program where we're over 100 years old now, and with all the longstanding programs, there can be a tendency to layer on additional policies and processes until we get buried under a bureaucracy of our own making. So when we visited back in March, I was really energized about the approaches you've taken in Utah and hoped our listeners would feel the same energy and enthusiasm as they hear the Utah story. Your director, Sarah Brenna, also briefly spoke about the efforts in Utah and the efforts around rapid engagement during the CSA VR conference. So I'm excited to explore this further and let's dig in. So Aaron, can you give the listeners a little background about the Utah program, like how many customers you serve, how many staff you have, and how the pandemic has influenced your numbers of applicants and individuals being served in the program?

Aaron: Certainly I appreciate the overview of the resumé and all the details. I've had a fun opportunity to move into a few different positions, but within us two are something that I think is interesting, is like we're one of the first five state VR programs as the program nationally was celebrating its 100th anniversary. That was also our anniversary that year. So we have a really unique position as being one of the flagship state agencies for people with disabilities. And we're a combined program, but we also have different specialized programs for people who are blind, visually impaired, deaf and hard of hearing. We also handle the Social Security disability determination and also we oversee the independent living contracts. But we're the VR program at our core. We have a staff of 250 counselors, support staff directors. We also have our in-house Pre-ETS program benefits planners and also a division that focuses on assistive technology services. So for that context, prior to the pandemic, we were serving about 17 to 18000 people with disabilities coming through VR. And certainly like a lot of other state agencies, we were hit pretty hard. We had a drop in applicant and individuals choosing to suspend services or delay. And of course, our priority at that time was ensuring that our staff were safe, that our clients were safe, and keeping the program going and doing that same shift as everyone else, adapting our procedures, getting people doing telework and remote work. So as we were entering the pandemic around that same time, we were in the process of clearing out our order of selection wait list. So we had this slump where we were getting in more applicants, and then it was a bit of a setback. But now we're in that process of rebuilding, getting out there, re-engaging with the community, identifying new partners, not just resting on this being the new normal, but seeing what else that we can do that's new and different to get our numbers back up. So thankfully, the drop has stabilized. So we're really working on rebuilding those new applicants coming into services from VR.

Carol: So about how many people are you serving today then?

Aaron: So currently we're at about 16,000 people who are coming through the VR program, so the drop has stopped, but we're working on that rebuilding and really focusing on some of the local level partnerships that our clients and staff are making out there and also trying to be different. We realize we can't just go back to the same referral sources and do things the same. So we're really challenging ourselves to get our name out there and move past the phrase that I hate hearing about VR being the best kept secret. We really want to be out there and let different types of disability groups know that we're here and how we can help them.

Carol: Yeah, I agree with that. I hate that too. About the best kept secret. I used to say that I'm like, Why don't we want to be a secret? We want people to come in the door. So tell me about the impetus to implement your back to basics approach. What caused you to want to dig in and do things differently?

Aaron: I think it's interesting. During that time we had gone through about a 4 to 5 year period of a lot of significant change. Now change us something that's the normal we adapt to. But for context, we had a change in leadership. We had to rapidly implement an order of selection. And then we also moved from being under an education agency as our DSA and moving to Labor. We had a new case management system. We went paperless. Then of course all the fun with implementing WIO policies and procedures and audits. So we were in a constant cycle of change and as you said, layering. So we felt a need. We heard it from our clients, we heard it from our staff to take a step back because they wanted to know what are our priorities. And we also want it to be more intentional and less reactive. I think we were just in an environment and a culture of responding to change. So we did a lot of talking with our directors, with our frontline staff, and there was a consensus that they knew to do their jobs, but they didn't understand what their priorities were. What can we focus on now for the coming year, for the next two years? And we actually had an interesting conversation with one of our new deputy directors who was learning about VR and wanting to know what are your indicators, what are your outcomes? And he asked the question of what does good look like? And it was a good challenge not to raise it in a way about compliance or numbers, but his question was No, tell me, what does good VR look like? So we took that as an opportunity to really think about again, like, what are our core activities, things that we know at that management level.

But there was a disconnect with our staff. They didn't feel like they were being counselors. They felt like they were being case managers, having to check the box, having to do the compliance piece. So we really wanted to look at what are our needs, what's going to benefit our clients, and what are the barriers that can't be solved by putting out another policy, doing another technology change, we're really stripping things back to the core. So that's how the conversation got started about getting back to basics and what that meant for Utah VR.

Carol: I bet you were really happy about that new case management system and going paperless in light of the pandemic. I mean, like what timing?

Aaron: It positioned us very well to be agile and adapting to the pandemic and being able to get all of our counties out there doing Telework and serving their clients event well.

Carol: So let's chat some specifics of back to basics. How did you implement this approach and what went into it and how did you involve your counselors and customers?

Aaron: Well, one of the first things that we did is we did some research. We were really digging into the theory of constraints and identifying some of those limiting factors or the bottleneck in the VR process. So we've got some focus groups together with our directors, our program specialists, and we pulled in our counselors to do some VR process mapping of start to finish even when we're going out in the community and doing outreach and then identifying those points of constraint. And some of the biggest issues that we were encountering was how we h