Our Team

Kathy Koontz R.N.

Kathy Koontz RN, MSN is a Consultant that works with HCBS Strategies Inc. on various projects as well as her own individual contracts. She has 25 years of experience in management consulting, project management, program development and implementation for both the public and private sectors nationwide. She has particular expertise in the assessment and evaluation of systems of care, Federal Waivers, Medicaid programs, managed care organizations, and quality improvement structures and processes.  This expertise crosses the age and service delivery continuum, with both physical and behavioral health populations and numerous special needs populations.  At the federal level, Ms Koontz served as a QA/QI grant reviewer for CMS’ Real Choice Systems Change grants. She has spent the past six years as an evaluator for the Center for Mental Health Services’ (CMHS) National Evaluation of grantee sites of the Comprehensive Community Mental Health Services for Children and their Families program. The evaluation design is complex and includes multiple components based upon the principles that services are consumer driven, individualized, with interagency integration and collaboration, accessible, community-based and least restrictive. Ms. Koontz was the author of the Maryland Medicaid Managed Care Program (HealthChoice) “Quality Improvement Program Plan”, to ensure quality of care to the 400,000 plus recipients of waiver services in Maryland.  To develop this plan she facilitated seven different special interest focus groups, each with a diverse membership, to develop quality and access standards for seven different special needs populations. She also developed the Quality Improvement strategy for the Rare and Expensive Case Management Program, a special needs component of the Maryland’s 1115 Medicaid Waiver. Since 1999, Ms. Koontz has been a member of the Delmarva Foundation Quality Improvement Organization’s “External Quality Review Organization (EQRO)” evaluation team.  She has performed annual reviews of the seven Medicaid Managed Care Organizations (MCOs) in Maryland’s HealthChoice program (including Delaware Plans). She has also conducted EQRO reviews for two Virginia Health Plans and one Virginia Program of All Inclusive Care for the Elderly (PACE program) in 2004. She also worked with Delmarva and Maryland’s Division of Waiver Services to help look at methods to improve quality improvement program for home and community based waiver recipients under the Older Adult, Living at Home and Autism Spectrum Disorder Waivers.

Her Medicaid, Waiver Evaluations and managed care work has occurred in Maryland, Delaware, Rhode Island, Oklahoma, Texas, Louisiana, Washington D.C. and Pennsylvania. State clients for systems of care evaluation work include: Colorado, Florida, Michigan, New York, Nebraska, Oregon, Texas, and Washington.  Ms. Koontz received a Bachelor of Science in Nursing from the University of Maryland in 1980 and a Masters of Science in Nursing in the Adult Nurse Practitioner Program from the Catholic University of America in 1986.

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