Diana Forester, Mph Email & Phone Number

Austin, Texas, United States

Austin, Texas, United States

Serve as the maternal health lead, researching ways to provide better quality care to Texans on Medicaid while holding managed care organizations accountable.Support the appointment availability project, ensuring Medicaid members can access services in a timely manner.

Austin, Texas Area

• Performs advanced policy analysis and research; complex project management; and senior-level planning, oversight, and coordination of legislative activities for the Medical and Social Services division.
• Senior-level project planning and coordination, work plan development, oversight of workgroups and meetings
• Researching, analyzing, and evaluating complex program and policy issues and initiatives
• Reviews, interprets, and analyzes federal and state statutes, rules and regulations, guidance and procedures
• Maintains communication with project stakeholders and agency leadership
• Develops, coordinates, and edits briefing documents, issue papers, reports, correspondence, bill analyses and memoranda for executive management review and decision-making

Austin, Texas Area

• Designed and implemented medical and dental pay-for-quality programs
• Presented the redesigned programs for stakeholders, doctors, dentists, legislators, advocacy groups, and federal partners
• Identified and facilitated the recoupment of millions of dollars for lack of compliance from managed care entities
• Implemented several corrective action plans to address data quality issues
• Ran Administrative Interviews for each of the 21 managed care entities providing services for Medicaid and CHIP, reviewing policies, manuals, and data to ensure state and federal compliance

Austin, Texas Area

• Researching and analyzing federal and state policies related to Medicaid, the Children’s Health Insurance Program (CHIP), the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP), and Temporary Assistance for Needy.
• Communicating policy options, issues, and recommendations to agency leadership.
• Drafting and facilitating the review of new agency Medicaid, CHIP, SNAP, and TANF policies.
• Developing and implementing new processes for policy analysis and development.
• Leading and participating in agency projects to implement policy and process changes.
• Implementing a major agency strategic project to integrate Affordable Care Act (ACA) policy content into the agency’s policy handbook.

Austin, Texas Area

• Manage and implement multiple Medicaid eligibility policy projects related to the Affordable Care Act (ACA), include renewals and modified adjusted gross income (MAGI), using waterfall and agile methodologies
• Monitor, track, research, and analyze complex policies, regulations, legislation, and laws affecting Medicaid, Children’s Health Insurance Plan (CHIP), Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF), and Supplemental.
• Develop agency polices, Texas Administrative Code rules, responses to stakeholder requests, and documents for agency leadership including presentations, memorandums, reports, and recommendations
• Develop internal processes for rule changes, state plan amendments, federal reporting, waiver renewals, and correspondence updates and issues

Dallas/Fort Worth Area

Issue research and development of messaging materials for a top Fortune 500 Company. Preparing executive presentation materials, drafting talking points and speeches, writing op-eds on behalf of the client and third parties and preparing fact sheets for external communications.

Provides advice and information, research, preparing briefing documents, drafting bills for legislative consideration, responding to constituent inquiries, and tracking legislative activitiesPerforms professional bill analysis work involving examination, review, and analysis of bills before the House and the Public Health Committee

• Receive files from TMHP and perform initial review
• Negotiate settlement amount with patient attorney
• Receive and process settlement checks
• Work with OAG to reach settlement on difficult cases

• Schedule meetings and make travel arrangements for Guardianship Advisory Board
• Visit organizations receiving grant money to verify continued program compliance
• Help edit and publish annual Guardianship report and distribute to Legislature

• Conducted initial interviews on referrals and delegated to case managers
• Created and maintained referral and client database
• Managed and distributed financial assistance for clients
• Updated case managers on resource changes
• Aided in transition of program termination

Master'S Degree, Public Health

Bachelor Of Arts (B.A.), Sociology