Staff profile: Janet Hamilton
As we mentioned in the June enewsletter, the new fiscal year has heralded a significant growth for our organization, as we added care coordination services for Multnomah and Clackamas Counties. Supporting the transition is Janet Hamilton, in the new position of Director of Operations, who will manage the expansion of services and help create more capacity to absorb the change.
“The combination of expanding the regional program and incorporating local programs into our regional operations led to growth from 4 to 9 employees and the need to incorporate even more volunteers to support our efforts,” Janet said. “In addition, we are excited about the cultural changes for our organization, inherent in such a significant transition.”
Correspondingly, Janet hopes to integrate the new staff, volunteers, and services into a coherent whole, and help create an organizational culture of people working together, intentionally focused on our core mission, connecting the uninsured to needed healthcare services. In order to implement our strategic goals for expansion, we are also in the midst of implementing a new database to support our efforts to coordinate care for patients and connect them to providers.
“A great deal of the work is developing infrastructure for new service delivery models and staff and volunteer support,” Janet said. “The other part includes such nuts-and-bolts things as developing a cleaning schedule or figuring out where visitors can sit when they show up for appointments.”
A recovering Californian, Janet fell in love with the Pacific Northwest in the early 1990s when she traveled here regularly for her work as a healthcare information systems consultant, a profession she has yet to fully shed despite various career forays as a coffee shop/specialty grocery store owner, organizational development consultant, mediator, and even one day of law school.
Janet has called Portland home since 2003. For just over seven years, she worked as Director of Information Systems at Columbia United Providers in Vancouver, Washington. A strong desire to live and work in Portland as well as to “become even more involved in the important work of helping people navigate our broken health care system”, led her to the new position with Project Access NOW.
Janet is “thrilled to be riding her bike to work everyday and honored to be counted among the outstanding staff of Project Access NOW”. When not at work, you can find Janet coaxing her tomato plants through the spring gloom, overspending at a farmers market, or paddling on one of Portland’s fabulous waterways.
(July 2010)
