CareOregon has cut staff in some areas, added in others, says CareOregon president and CEO Eric C. Hunter

Although CareOregon has laid off staff recently, Trump administration policies have resulted in hiring in some areas of the organization, says Eric C. Hunter, president and CEO of the nonprofit Medicaid managed care plan and a member of the Managed Healthcare Executive (MHE) editorial advisory board.

“It’s actually caused us to hire more people in some areas because there is a greater need for traditional health workers in the community,” Hunter said in an extensive interview with MHE. “There's a greater need for us to support translation services and navigation services for some of our members, particularly in our immigrant communities, where folks are afraid to leave their houses. They're afraid to go to the doctor or the hospital. They're afraid to pick up their prescriptions. So we have to develop systems to wrap around them, working with community organizations to say, ‘How do we make sure people who are deserving of these benefits get those benefits and stay healthy?’”

This is the third segment of Hunter’s interview with MHE during which he discussed behavioral health costs, work requirements, pharmacy benefit managers and a number of other issues.

CareOregon had one round of “voluntary separations” last year that was followed by a round of involuntary separations. Hunter said the staffing reductions were made with CareOregon’s priorities in mind, not with staffing level goals.

“We're constantly — and it's more on steroids now — evaluating the work we do, how we're organized, how we prioritize our spend, and we've identified places where we're overstaffed for what we're now defining the work to be. That will continue,”Hunter said.

The organization doesn’t anticipate large, programmatic changes, Hunter adding that “as we continue to refine, department by department, what are the initiatives we need to push forward to serve people better, to support our providers, to get the work done? How can we be more efficient? If we identify that we don't need to backfill positions, or we don't need to fill positions, or entire departments may move, we'll do that.”