- Federal, state and local government health and human service agencies,
- Associations,
- Foundations,
- Educational institutions, and
- For-profit and not-for-profit long-term care and disability service organizations
Susan A. Flanagan, Ph.D., M.P.H. is the founder and Principal of The Westchester Consulting Group. She is responsible for all research, consulting, and technical assistance services, marketing and financial operations as well as the strategic direction of the organization.
Dr. Flanagan has over 25 years experience with long-term health care and disability programs, finance and quality assurance issues on the federal, state and corporate levels. A significant portion of her work has been in designing, implementing and evaluating Medicare and Medicaid payment systems for nursing facilities and intermediary care facilities for the mentally retarded. Dr. Flanagan was the Director of the Bureau of Long-Term Care at the Massachusetts Rate Setting Commission and a co-principal investigator responsible for developing and implementing the Medicaid prospective case-mix payment system for Massachusetts nursing facilities. She also was a member of the evaluation team for the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services’ Medicare Nursing Facility Prospective Case-Mix Payment System Demonstration under a subcontract with Abt Associates in Cambridge, MA.
Dr. Flanagan is a national leader in developing and implementing Medicaid-funded participant-directed support service programs for the elderly and persons of all ages with disabilities using various support services (i.e., Financial Management Services - Fiscal/Employer Agents and Agency with Choice and other supportive services). She has conducted four national studies related to self-directed support services for the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services Office of the Assistant Secretary for Planning and Evaluation (DHHS/OASPE). They include: Consumer-Directed Attendant Services: How States Address Tax, Legal and Quality Assurance Issues (1994); Using ISOs to Facilitate the Use of CD-PAS: Key Operational Issues for State Program Administrators (1997) with Pamela S. Green; ASPE Consumer-Directed Support Service Program Inventory (2001), and Accessing Workers’ Compensation Insurance for Consumer-Employed Personal Assistance Workers’: Issues, Challenges and Promising Practices (2004). To date, she has provided research, policy and program development, analysis and evaluation, training, and technical assistance services to over three dozen state and local government agencies and private sector organizations.
Dr. Flanagan received a B.A. in Biology and Chemistry from Skidmore College and a M.P.H. in Health Systems from Boston University School of Public Health. In addition, she was a Pew Fellow and received a Ph.D. from Brandeis University’s Heller School of Social Policy and Management in Social Policy.
Prior to founding The Westchester Consulting Group, Dr. Flanagan held several key positions in the area of long-term health care policy and research. She was a Senior Manager at Ernst & Young, LLP; Program Manager at The MEDSTAT Group; an Assistant Director in the Division of Health Financing and Systems and the U.S. General Accounting Office; and the Director of the Bureau of Long-term Care at the Massachusetts Rate Setting Commission.
