Employment Highlights

Ginger Schomacker
Nominated by: Lori Henning & Shirley Oines

Ginger Schomacker was hired as a part-time clerical support over five years ago. Not long after starting her new job Ginger was seen as a leader and asked if she wanted to become more of an office manager. She enjoyed the people and the field itself and she was willing to take on a few more responsibilities. She never would have guessed the new challenges that awaited her. Ginger not only excels in her role as office manager, but has taken on the responsibility of learning all the intricacies of support the Habilitative Services, Inc. PCA (Personal Care Assistant) services offer. Due to the unique model of service delivery for this program, Ginger has had to learn and in most cases pioneered, a new set of skills that have allowed her to become the ‘go to’ person regarding the service delivery of PCA. She has proven over and over the value she brings as a resource, especially to the support departments like Human Resources, Accounting, etc. Ginger is proactive in researching, seeking out and keeping abreast of changes made to the program at the state level and communicating any changes to the team responsible for delivering the service. PCA has numerous challenges, including a multitude of payers, like MA, private insurance, and manage care organizations. The system also experiences a lot of change in eligibility which makes it challenging to track due to the source of payment for recipients changing even on a monthly basis. This system requires Ginger to be very flexible and timely. Sometimes the deadlines she is given to work with are extremely short, and she may have several projects from different people all due within a set amount of time. It is a rare occasion when she hasn’t been able to meet those requests and deadlines. Her work is submitted and completed timely, accurate, and of high quality. There are very few people who can deal with the ongoing challenges and changes that Ginger sees on a daily basis, but her demeanor is always calm, professional, and pleasant. Habilitative Services, Inc. transitioned from providing PCA services under our Class A home health license (MDH) to a PCPO provider (DHS) more than a year ago. During this transition it was very chaotic and time consuming. Ginger played an integral part in that process and made it successful. She is committed to keeping the PCA program a viable part of the HSI services. Ginger is one of those people who is a fast learner, efficient, pleasant, and non-judgmental. She gets the work done and then some while knowing how to prioritize and does not complain while doing it. Ginger is able to identify more efficient and effective ways to do business. As exhausting as supporting an ever-changing ambiguous program must be, everyone is amazed at Ginger’s willingness to patiently and thoroughly answer questions and work through the system, and she does it all with a smile.