Sally Speed Director, New York State Medicaid Training Institute

Sally Speed joined CDHS in 1985 as one of the Center’s three Medicaid trainers, just one year after the Medicaid Training Institute became the primary source of Medicaid training in New York State. In 1990 she was promoted to senior trainer, and in 1994 she assumed the directorship. Under her leadership the Institute has expanded to include statewide training of facilitated enrollment staff whose role it is to conduct outreach to identify and enroll uninsured New Yorkers in public health programs.

Sally has been actively involved in development of numerous curriculum offerings, notably as one of the three developers of the New York State Chronic Care Institute curriculum that focuses on identifying Medicaid eligibility criteria for nursing home patients. In addition to developing the major part of the curriculum materials used in the New Worker Institute she also was the principal developer of the three-day Basic Facilitated Enrollment training mandated for all enrollment facilitators in New York State.

At the forefront in the use of technology in training, she has piloted the use of teleconferences in Medicaid training, and this popular format continues to be used to disseminate information to local districts. She has also established dedicated Web sites used for online training, including one with training modules for enrollment facilitators and another that provides the sole source of New York State Department of Health Qualified Provider training mandated for those who determine program eligibility for pregnant women.