Health Policy and Administration Alumni Updates

Maria Gatto

What are you doing today?

I am working for The Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS, formerly HCFA) in the division of survey and certifiction, under the survey improvement branch. My primary responsibilities include quality assurance for our branch, as well as holding the position of the ASPEN coordinator for the Chicago Regional Office. As a quality assurance person, I am routinely "policing" many of CMS's systems. These systems include the long-term care enforcement system, the civil money penaties system, MDS, OSCAR, and a hospital and home health system.

How has HPA helped you get where you are today?

HPA has helped me prepare for many of these rigorous tranining through projects that were done in the classrooms. To perform this quality assurance, I am going through very rigorous training to learn the various processes of CMS. This includes one-on-one and group training sessions, as well as studying of the State Operations Manual (five volumes)! My ASPEN coordinatior responsibilities include being a resource for federal home-health surveyors. ASPEN is the tool that surveyors use to enter survey data electronically, on-site. They only have it set up for Home-Health, thus far, and I am required to be of techincal assistance to these surveyors, as well as track their surveys to ensure appropriate data has been entered.

Most recently, I was involved in a project started as a result of an audit by the GAO. The audit found descrepancies in our civil money penalties system, and they needed to be resolved. I worked on that project for three weeks and managed to resolve many of the problems. Also, this prevented the GAO from reporting any adverse information to Congress (which the organization routinely does to CMS). Yesterday, I received a management award for my work on this project, and I get to choose between time off or a cash award!!!! Right now I am working on a performance standard for the states in our region (Il, IN, MI, WI, OH, and MN). This performance standard evaluates the accuracy of the data entry done by surveyors recertifying a nursing home.