Claims to Fame: 3 Incredible Lessons from Former Medicaid Director Cheryl J. Roberts, JD

Every so often, you have the opportunity to meet someone who radiates with a genuine passion for people and has the vision, skill and grit to turn that passion into real changes in people’s lives. Cheryl J. Roberts is one such person I’ve had the pleasure of meeting, and whose wisdom and experience we all benefited from during our recent conversation on Claims to Fame: Spotlighting the People Powering the System, Insider Session in partnership with Behavioral Health Tech. 

Her bio deserves its own landing page, but in a nutshell she was the former Director of the Virginia Department of Medical Assistance Services where she led one of the nation’s largest Medicaid programs serving nearly two million Virginians. And what Cheryl would say is that her passion and commitment was to the tens of millions of Americans who access their healthcare services using Medicaid because everyone deserves high quality, dependable services. Today she continues that work as the Founder and Principal of Roberts Strategic Consulting Group LLC where her passion continues to inform and drive every interaction and the innovation she continues to bring. 

 Here are a few of my favorite lessons learned from our conversation:  

If you’re innovating in Medicaid, you can’t stop at passion. You have to get practical and learn to communicate.  

• Cheryl is the first to tell you that passion and lived experience drive many of her projects. But successful (and sustained!) implementation requires strategy, creativity and effective messaging. 

• Communicating the cross cutting goals and objectives about an initiative must be paired with nuanced details about how the project can satisfy each stakeholders unique priorities. 

• This combined communication approach, which needs to happen in the context of building relationships with these stakeholders, will help you move the ball forward. 

“You have to drill down on the data”

• As much as we love measurement data, it can mask critical details. Investigating the data from multiple angles and levels, including gathering qualitative data from the people experiencing the challenges you’ve identified is essential. 

• For instance, when a trip to Petersburg Virginia painted a very different picture about maternity and postpartum outcomes than the high level data about the Richmond region showed, Cheryl learned first hand that drilling down on aggregate data prevented her from missing a serious issue. 

• Through these data, she learned that Petersburg, a town situated within the larger Richmond region, had some of the worst maternity and postpartum outcomes, which told her where the problems were.

• Engaging with the community, through listening sessions and speaking with expectant mothers, she learned that availability and access to after hours care for individuals using Medicaid insurance was a primary concern. This qualitative data gave her more details about why the problems existed. 

At the end of the day, we need to tie our work (and messaging) back to the heart of what matters.

• Do you need to demonstrate ROI, cost-savings, and overall effectiveness of your program innovation and its implementation? 100 percent. 

• But, as Cheryl shared, when she described the wonder on an expectant mother’s face who excitedly showed a photograph of an ultrasound and said “I’m going to have a baby”, the case became clear for the need for extended evening and weekend hours for an OBGYN practice for hospital administration. 

• “And then I watched him see. I watched the child see.” were some of the most compelling data needed to obtain the support needed for continuing and expanding a program offering mobile ophthalmology services and eyeglasses fittings for children. 

(Bonus!) Innovation in Medicaid is possible, and you can do it.  

• For this one, I’ll encourage you to watch the episode (wink!). You’ll find several gems tucked away in that discussion that will shape your understanding of what is possible within Medicaid for the innovators wanting to make an impact.

BHT Impact is a fiscally sponsored project of Moore Impact, a 501(c)3 public charity.