Interview: May 25, 2007

Amanda Reichard, Ph.D.

How's the start of your project going?
The good news and bad news with R3. I will start with the bad news. The bad news is we got lots and lots of data and did lots and lots of analyses and realized the data was not accurate. So, we had to start over this week from scratch with the data.

The good news on that end is that I think we finally figured out with working with the people at Medicaid for six months now what they are doing wrong on their end. I think it is fixed. We should have it by the beginning of next week.

And even more exciting news is the SRS [Social and Rehabilitation Services], the agency that houses the Home and Community Based waivers in Kansas, has recently received s $37 million the money-follows-the person grant. As part of that, they are interested in what we are going to produce from this grant. Actually, they want it pretty quickly, which is fine because we should be able to assuming the data are now accurate. There is also a potential for us to maybe further this project by conducting an evaluation for them. So, we are starting to work with them on that.