Digital Commons Network^™

Medicaid And Medicaid Cost Containment In Massachusetts, Fredric A. Waldstein

New England Journal of Public Policy

The purpose of this article is to describe Medicaid's financial structure and examine cost containment efforts to limit future growth of the program, particularly pertaining to Massachusetts. The principal focus is the Massachusetts Department of Public Welfare and the Massachusetts Medicaid Fraud Control Unit, the two agencies most responsible for Medicaid cost containment in the commonwealth. Because elected officials are unwilling to face directly the troublesome issues surrounding Medicaid and its growth, the government agencies responsible for cost containment have been left to define the scope of the problem, design remedial strategies, and evaluate their success. This process is found …

Governing And Managing Multi-Modal Transit Agencies In A Multicentric Era, Sy Adler, Sheldon Edner

Center for Urban Studies Publications and Reports

We explore the dynamics of governing and managing multi-modal regional transit agencies through a case study of the Tri-County Metropolitan Transit District (Tri-Met), which provides bus and rail transit services to the Portland, Oregon, metropolitan area (see map). Along with other similarly constituted firms in the United States transit industry, Tri-Met confronts the challenge of providing service in a geopolitical context that is quite different than when the agency was created. The critical new element in Tri-Met's operating environment is the emergence of several suburban business centers that effectively compete with the Portland central business district (CBD), and are seeking …

Strategic Planning In Human Service Agencies, Stephen A. Webster, Mary Wylie

The Journal of Sociology & Social Welfare

Recent public policy initiatives including deinstitutionalization, deregulation, decentralization, and privatization have resulted in: (a) rapid growth in the number of private not-for-profit organizations; and, (b) competitive environments. These conditions have forced agencies to examine their planning processes to determine if agency goals are appropriate for meeting market demands. An exploratory study of 154 human service agencies examined if and how strategic planning was used to respond to these conditions. The Chief Executive Officers for those agencies reported that strategic planning was replacing incremental planning as a preferred planning model. However, the choice resulted because of pressure from outside influentials not …

Hospital Responses To A Nursing Shortage : Policy Issues And Professional Implications, Marlene Lobracco Smith

Dissertations and Theses

This study addresses three policy issues found in the literature: How can hospitals best manage the problem of shortages of the nursing home resource, how have federal policy makers responded to the mounting shortages, and how has the unique character of nursing influenced policy.

An analysis of existing hospital policy making is presented. An analysis of the class conflict within nursing is also presented. Data have been generated from a case sample of six urban hospitals in the Pacific Northwest to assess their management of the nursing resource during the critical shortages of the late 1970s.

Three response patterns have …

Public Land Management: Planning, Problems, And Opportunities, David C. Williams

The Public Lands During the Remainder of the 20th Century: Planning, Law, and Policy in the Federal Land Agencies (Summer Conference, June 8-10)

26 pages (includes illustrations).

Contains bibliography.

Focal Point, Volume 01 Number 03, Portland State University. Regional Research Institute

Research and Training Center - Focal Point

Therapeutic Case Advocacy (TCA) is one approach to helping emotionally handicapped children and their families. It is described here as a multi-level model to improve services for this population for two reasons. First, the approach typically requires planned, coordinated activity on three levels: the child and family, the lead organization providing services, and interagency collaboration. Second, the word "model" conveys the idea of what the real thing might look like.

The model is a preliminary pattern, a plan for guiding the actual process of helping emotionally handicapped children and their families. It is not a recipe. Any actual process of …

Managing Change: Reflections On Innovation In The Public Sector, Ira A. Jackson, Jane P. O'Hern

New England Journal of Public Policy

In January 1983, when Governor Michael S. Dukakis appointed Ira Jackson as commissioner of revenue, the Commonwealth of Massachusetts was facing an estimated $300 million deficit. The state was also suffering from a severe loss of public confidence in the integrity of its tax administration. His first and most urgent priority being the restoration of that confidence, Commissioner Jackson implemented a three-part strategy to improve voluntary compliance with the tax laws: raising the stakes for evaders, treating honest taxpayers as customers rather than victims, and changing public attitudes about tax evasion. Productivity gains and innovative procedures at the Department of …

Transit Agency Characteristics: An Industry Profile, Charles R. White, Sheldon Edner, Kathi Arlene Ketcheson

Center for Urban Studies Publications and Reports

This study reports on a survey sent to 493 transit agencies in 1983. The survey instrument requested information concerning agency institutional type, operating characteristics, service area population, employment, management pool, finances and recruitment problems for the period 1979-1983. Surveys were returned by 207 agencies, 171 of which were accompanied by organization charts. The purpose of the survey was to solicit institutional information concerning agency structure to serve as background information for a subsequent study of respondent agency managers.

The study results describe a managerial context that si extremely diverse across agency characteristics, change in attributes and organizational patterns. Only the …

Urban Decision Making For Transportation Investments: Portland's Light Rail Transit System, Sheldon Edner, G. B. Arrington Jr.

Center for Urban Studies Publications and Reports

Investment decisions for large transportation projects are complex, multifaceted phenomena. Generally requiring many years to bring to fruition, such decisions are often reduced at crucial junctures to raw political deals or technical data analysis on limited items. Throughout the range of alternatives considered, analyses completed and policy-making sessions which contribute to such investments, the imagery of a rational, sequential and wholistic decision making process and substance dominates. Recent debate concerning both the desirability of certain transit investments and the extent to which inappropriate intrusion into the decision making province of state and local government have occurred have highlighted at least …

Program Characteristics Of Semesterized Secondary Vocational Agriculture/Agribusiness Programs Which Promote Student Involvement In Supervised Occupational Experience Programs And Ffa Leadership Activities, Lloyd C. Bell

Department of Agricultural Leadership, Education, and Communication: Dissertations, Theses, and Student Research

The purpose of this study was to identify program characteristics of semesterized secondary vocational agriculture/agribusiness programs which promote student involvement in supervised occupational experiences and FFA leadership activities. The design of this study utilized three data collection instruments. The first instrument was an SOEP/FFA involvement survey developed by the author. The second instrument was developed by the author and solicited SOEP and FFA program characteristics deemed necessary in a semesterized program by instructors of the cooperating schools. The third instrument, an SOEP/FFA program characteristic opinionnaire, was developed by the author as a result of the program characteristics submitted by participating …

Proceedings Of A Workshop On Interactive Graphics For Transportation Planners, Kenneth Dueker, Ross Roberts

Center for Urban Studies Publications and Reports

The workshop attracted transportation planners from transit and regional planning agencies, consulting firms, and local governments. It explored the use of interactive graphics coupled with multi-modal transportation planning.

Several key aspects of the use of interactive graphics were explored in panel discussions and demonstration workshop sessions. These aspects included the evolution of interactive graphics technology, the structured application of this technology in implementation, the operational environment, impacts on planning agencies and future applications of this technology.

The demonstration of applications was made possible by use of Metro's EMME/2 system. Metro is the Metropolitan Planning Organization (MPO) for the Portland area. …

Regulatory Reform: A Report Card For The Reagan Administration, Murray L. Weidenbaum

Murray Weidenbaum Publications

Murray Weidenbaum evaluates how much regulatory reform has been accomplished in the Reagan Administration after two-and-three-quarter years.

Microcomputers And City Governments, Donald F. Norris, Vincent J. Webb

Publications

In 1976 a revolution occurred. blood was shed, but the effects No shots were fired, no of the revolution in electronic data processing have been felt throughout the country. What is more, its effects will continue to be felt for many years to come.

City Of Omaha Personnel Department: Analysis And Recommendations, Donald F. Norris, B. J. Reed, Vincent J. Webb

Publications

The Center for Applied Urban Research undertook an analysis of the city of Omaha personnel department during the winter and spring of 1983. This is a summary of the principal findings and recommendations of that analysis. Detailed discussion regarding these and other important issues of personnel management in Omaha can be found in the body of this report.

The Quality Of Public Education In Boston: An Assessment And Some Recommendations, Karen Seashore Louis

Center for Survey Research Publications

Motivation, self-esteem, achievement and the development of tolerance and acceptance of others -- these are the goals that most, like Crain, et al., have come to accept as legitimate objectives of public schooling. Yet, there is substantial opinion that the public schools of Boston have been unable to achieve standards in these areas that are acceptable to the public, the students who occupy the schools, and the professionals who run them. For example, a recent survey of Boston residents' attitudes toward the schools indicates that approximately 3/4 of all respondents -- irrespective of race, or whether there were any school …

Report On Repeal Of Charter Amendments And Referral To Charter Review Committee (Multnomah County Measure No. 1), City Club Of Portland (Portland, Or.)

City Club of Portland

No abstract provided.

The Cresset (Vol. Xliv, No. 8), Valparaiso University

The Cresset (archived issues)

No abstract provided.

American Health Care: Paradigm Structures And The Parameters Of Change, Allen W. Imershein

The Journal of Sociology & Social Welfare

Recent commentary on the health care scene in the U.S. has moved increasingly toward explanations of why little or no change has occurred despite many declarations of "crisis." From Alford's (1975) elitist analysis in Health Care Politics to Navarro's (1976) marxist analysis in Medicine Under Capitalism, critics in and out of the social sciences have tried to make sense of the array of current problems and the apparent lack of response to or change in them. These analyses are in striking contrast to earlier commentaries (e.g., Schwartz, 1971; Garfield, 1970; Anderson, 1972; Citizens Board, 1972) which, while highly critical of …

The Impact Of Consumerism On Health Care Change: Alternatives For The Future?, Allen W. Imershein, Eugenia T. Miller

The Journal of Sociology & Social Welfare

The quest for consumer participation in the management of health care delivery may have experienced its first signs of success, but the implications of that success are as yet unclear. The establishment of consumer majorities on the newly developed health systems agency (HSA) boards was seen as an important milestone in the development of the consumer movement in America over the last ten years. The initial wave of optimism over the Great Society programs that in part gave birth to the consumer movement has long since vanished, but some of the organizational results of those attempts at innovation have become …

A Study Of Alcohol Prevention Grants In The State Of Nebraska, 1973-1979, Center For Public Affairs Research (Cpar)

Publications

In the early 1970's as the enormous pressure of drug related problems was abating~ the attention of mental health professionals, school personnel, and the criminal justice system was refocused on the problems that come with alcohol. A new phenomenon seemed to be following the drug "scene", the increased alcohol usage among teen-agers and even children. The message was clear: an effort had to be made to prevent alcohol abuse before problem drinking became more widespread.

Social Polics And Social Welfare Administration, Bernard Neugeboren

The Journal of Sociology & Social Welfare

Effective administration of social welfare programs requires the integration of knowledge of social policy with the understanding of the theory and practice of management and administrative decision making. This integration of substantive knowledge of social policy with administrative practice is needed to avoid overemphasis on means to the detriment of the goals of social programs. This paper discusses a policy analysis framework in relationship to a model of decisionmaking which includes rational and non-rational elements. Principles of policy formulation (major system change) is applied to specific issues in social welfare, i.e. should social services be directed at changing the individual …

Review Of Applied Urban Research 1978, Vol. 06, No. 06, Center For Public Affairs Research (Cpar)

Publications

This issue of Review of Applied Urban Research features "Status Offenders and Non-Profit Youth Service and Advocacy Organizations," by Genevieve Burch and Carole Davis.

When the Pima County Juvenile Justice Collaboration offered free bumper stickers asking "Have You Hugged Your Kid Today?," 6,000 Tucsonians grabbed up three printings and four other local agencies began promoting the same slogan.

National Juvenile Justice Program Collaboration - Evaluation Report, Genevieve Burch

Publications

Evaluation of a Collaboration of National Non-Profit Health and Welfare Organizations as They Worked Together to Serve Status Offenders and Other Youth at Risk

Longitudinal Patterns Of Centralization And Development: Testing Theories Of Governmental Organization, Dale Krane

Public Administration Faculty Publications

In attempting to cope with the challenges of modernization, government officials are urged by specialists in development and comparative administration to manipulate the organization of public activity. Prescriptions for altering the public sector usually advocate one of two simple but contradictory options: centralization or decentralization. Adopting one or the other of these administrative arrangements reputedly yields important benefits which have system-wide impact on the course of development.¹ Unfortunately, no a priori principle exists to guide the choice between these sharply divergent alternatives. The present study was designed to compare the consequences of these organizational strategies in order to evaluate …

The Msw And The Mpa: Confrontation Of Two Professions In Public Welfare, Thomas H. Walz, Harry J. Macy

The Journal of Sociology & Social Welfare

From its inception in the 1930's, public welfare has emerged as a major service industry commanding a sizeable portion of the public tax dollar. Concomitant with growth and size and expenditure has come the federalization of the program. In the face of a series of changes--the growth of welfare, added administrative complexity, and the emergence of new economic function--public welfare's identification with social work was weakened. Correspondingly, and perhaps logically, its identification with public administration has been strengthened. In this paper, there is exploration of the changes leading to the confrontation between social work and public administration within public welfare. …

An Economist's Evaluation Of President Carter's Freshman Year In Office, Murray L. Weidenbaum

Murray Weidenbaum Publications

This paper attempts to grade the president's economic policies and performance through his first year. Specifically, it examines what President Carter's economic objectives are, what he has accomplished to date, what difference he has made to the nation's economy, and what he needs to do before leaving office in order to earn a passing grade.

Manufacturers' Responses To Fuel Supply Problems, Evelyn R. Rosenthal

UMR-MEC Conference on Energy / UMR-DNR Conference on Energy

The progress of energy conservation in industry was investigated with the aim of identifying barriers to strong energy conservation efforts. One of these barriers proved to be fuel supply problems as exemplified by the natural gas shortage of 1976-77.

The Flor-Ala Vol. 46 No. 27, University Of North Alabama

Flor-Ala 1970-1979

1977-04-13

Us Army Foreign Science And Technology Center, Unit History, Fy 1963-Fy 77 (Unredacted), Robert Bolin , Depositor

United States Department of Defense Military Intelligence

This document is a basic organizational history of the Foreign Science and Technology Center (FSTC). It describes how FSTC was built out of various Army technical intelligence organizations; traces its relocations eventually culminating in settling into a federal building in Charlottesville, VA; and traces its various reorganizations and changes in staffing.

Appendix A contains a detailed discussion of FSTC Table of Distribution and Allowances (TDAs) changes over the years. That analysis shows how administrative problems were handled and how the focus of the organization had changed over the years. It also contains organizational charts corresponding to new TDAs, and tables …

A First Aid Teaching Unit For The Missionary System Of The Church Of Jesus Christ Of Latter-Day Saints, Glenn R. Schiraldi

Theses and Dissertations

The intent of this study was to develop a sixty minute, mediated practical first aid teaching unit for the missionary system of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.