Institute for Families in Society

I am a Senior SAS Programmer Analyst with 30 years of experience primarily in Medicaid and Medicare Data Management and Application Development.

Over the years, I rode the evolution wave of the SAS software system, reading papers, attending courses, attending regional and national conferences and excitedly looking for ways to implement the latest and greatest innovations at work. I thoroughly enjoy problem-solving and creating solutions.

At Blue Cross & Blue Shield of South Carolina, a Medicare contractor, I was part of the implementation team of the first national Medicare contract. We successfully developed the data infrastructure to handle the receipt, monitoring, summarization and analysis of national Durable Medical Equipment, Prosthetics, Orthotics, and Supplies (DMEPOS) claims history data and generate summary reports and quarterly abstract articles. In addition to data management, data analysis and reporting using SAS, I also developed and maintained an online information system that was used by the Helpline representatives to quickly respond to customers for the same national contract. The successful implementation of this Medicare contract led to the rapid expansion into other Medicare lines of business: Part A, Part B and DMERC. Unique and invaluable Medicare data experience was also gained by working on the front side of claims processing-- by applying complex pricing methodologies for Part A, Part B and DMERC lines of business; and developing and implementing quality improvement initiatives using SAS.

At the Medical College of Georgia, I developed and maintained electronic data capture systems for physicians and medical researchers using SAS.

Since 2005, I have worked with the Institute for Families in Society, as a Senior Research Associate providing technical leadership in the creation, manipulation and interpretation of South Carolina Medicaid claims and encounter data and providing technical leadership in the interpretation and manipulation of various quality measures. Data Management here is an umbrella term that encompasses wide-ranging tasks, laying the foundation for all other research-related activities. My initial project was the Managed Care Project which began by manually developing a set of HEDIS measures using SAS. This led to the development of periodic Medicaid Plan Report Cards with Stars Methodology. Quality Measures are now applied to the entire Medicaid population and measures are generated for several Medicaid subpopulations. My data management tasks include applying complex sampling techniques, matching, the development of analytical datasets for various projects on the Medicaid population; developing Eligibility datasets; monitoring, troubleshooting data, developing input datasets and analyzing output datasets from external software applications; applying major data updates like the implementation of ICD-10; and maintaining commonly used external health tools.