Transcription
I can guarantee you if the technologists don't advocate for their own profession, nobody else is going to do that. And in the absence of that advocacy that keeps the door open for other professions to define the profession, we want to define ourselves. We don't want that to go have that happen somewhere else because bad things can happen legislatively that way.
[Applause] [Music] Jennifer, thank you so much for taking your time out of your asset uh time and spending it with us here at the Court of Care podcast. Really do appreciate it.
Trying looking back into your background, I am fascinated because I literally know not one thing about it, but I think it's such a obvious need to have someone that can um maneuver in your space without saying too much because I want you to introduce what you do, but I think it's just fascinating and and I'm extremely excited to hear a little bit about more. So tell us about your background, what you do, and how you got started doing what you do.
>> Okay. Well, thank you for allowing me to speak to this today. I think obviously it's an important topic. I think everybody needs to have some sort of knowledge or introduction into it. And so that's what I'm here to help with. Um I have actually a bachelor's degree in journalism from Radford University in Virginia.
>> Wow.
>> And I got interested from journalism. I got interested in politics. So I worked for one of the foremost lobbyists in the state of Virginia. Worked four sessions of the state legislature. Then I went to Washington DC and became the director of grassroots and political affairs for the American Wineries Association.
>> The Winery Association.
>> The Wineries. I represented American Wineries on Capitol Hill for about a decade.
>> That's awesome. So I was working with agriculture issues and alcohol issues.
>> Oh wow.
>> So I do not have background in healthcare.
>> Completely different.
>> Completely different than what you've been doing.
>> So how did you get started doing this then at asset? How did you land this role?
>> So actually my father was diagnosed with uh >> Crochfeld Yakob disease CJD and we know how that always turns out. So when I saw this job opening at asset specifically in government affairs, I thought, well, maybe that's a way I can connect and make a difference.
>> Yeah.
>> So that that had it not been for my dad and the people around him in the hospital.
>> Yeah.
>> Um and being a patient family member, we have our expectations that when somebody comes in the room, they're wellqualified. They know what they're doing and we want to be able to trust that.
>> Yeah. So this piqued my interest and that was seven years ago.
>> So you've seen it firsthand how neurodeenerative diseases can actually >> affect and and impact a family.
>> Yes. And you know it's it's with CJD it's such a one ina million >> episode.
>> Yeah.
>> There are very few people that have that experience and know about it. We knew nothing clearly. We learned as we went. Um, and by the end of it, like I said, you know, you realize who the important players are in the room with that patient and EEG is obviously a huge part of that uh treatment and diagnosis as well as well as you can treat it anyway.
>> Yeah, absolutely. You know, it's it's a such a common theme around our community that they have e they have either either had a seizure, have epilepsy, have a friend, a family member who has epilepsy, and that's how they got into this field. Very or or we just stumble upon it. Very rarely do you we, you know, graduate high school, graduate college thinking, oh, I'm going to be a neurodyagnostic technologist. It seems to be one of those that people really fall into. And I had Kevin on here earlier talking about how compassionate we are about our jobs. And I think that's why cuz it feels sometimes like this industry has chosen us, which is really cool. So I'm sorry to hear about uh your experience, but I'm super glad that you are taking that experience and and using it to to the betterment of of uh patients like your like your father was.
>> Yeah, it it's one of those things like you said, you can tell that these uh technologists are very uh compassionate people. Everybody that we dealt with was very caring, very sensitive to what we were going through.
>> And you know, it's hard to leave that behind once that experience is over. It still sticks with you. So, um having worked for nonprofits uh before, like in Washington, whatever, I had the experience with nonprofits. I thought, well, maybe this is a group I could help.
>> Yeah, that's amazing. That's amazing. So, okay, what is your official title and then what is your daytoday?
>> My official title is senior director of operations and government affairs, which I know is a very weird sounding hybrid position. Um, when I first came to asset, I came just as government affairs.
>> Okay.
>> And then um over time um I have some experience in as executive director so I have some of those job skills. So it was kind of a natural fit for me to um pitch in and help with operations. So it just kind of morphed into that.
>> Absolutely. And it it seems like your skill set is really well valued and and utilized here at asset.
>> I think it's a perfect match for me.
>> Yeah. So your day-to-day is what you go you go through uh you know government um or or maybe you look at operations and then tie that to government somehow.
>> Um no they're pretty separate basically. So in the mornings I'll look at some of the accounting functions that I have to do. Go in and check it see what you know bills some of that administrative um operations things take care of those in the morning. Get them out of the way. Then we have a sophisticated government affairs uh platform that I can monitor legislation. So I spend a lot of time on that. It tracks legislation in all 50 states and in Congress and all we had to do was input the keywords. So whenever a bill pops up in Rhode Island that's got EEG in it,
>> I get an alert that says, "Hey, so and so introduced this bill in Rhode Island. you may want to take a look at it.
>> Wow.
>> So, we can track legislation. We can get bios on the legislators that introduce the legislation. We can set up grassroots campaigns. We can invite our >> to fight against or to >> depending on what we want to do with it because you know there's typically three positions when it comes to legislation. You can oppose it,
>> you can support it or you can remain neutral.
>> Yeah. So, but we have this one platform where we can it's our mission control of our government affairs operations.
>> Okay. Okay. So, it's all kind of if I don't sound like an expertise or if I if I don't sound like I know what I'm talking about, it's exactly right. I don't know what I'm talking about. So, that's that's pretty uh pretty clear. So, um, what I heard you say is if there's some legislation that comes through, let's say, for example, the CPT code requirements in January 2020 when they, uh, made it a little bit more strict on how you can bill for long-term EEG monitoring. I'm assuming those are the things that you deal with.
>> Those are some of the things that we deal with. Um, we also get notices on federal rulemaking and regulations. So, as long as we have the right keywords plugged into the platform,
>> yeah,
>> if something pops up across the board in any of those topics in any state legislature or federal in Congress, it's going to show up on my dashboard.
>> Yeah. Yeah. Well, how important is it for technologists to be active in public policy? I would say it is very critical for technologists to be active in this because without advocating for the profession as someone who worked in DC and in the state legislature.
>> Yeah.
>> I can guarantee you if the technologists don't advocate for their own profession.
>> Yes.
>> Nobody else is going to do that. I promise you that.
>> Yes. So, and in the absence of that advocacy, that keeps the door open for other professions to creep into your scope of practice or define the profession. We want to define ourselves. We want that baseline where we're speaking the same language, same nomenclature, defining ourselves. We don't want that to go have that happen somewhere else.
>> Exactly.
>> Because bad things can happen legislatively that way.
>> Exactly. And legislatively, if that's a word, it sometimes it can tend to go away from true patient care. And I think if we're boots on the ground, we are the ones that know really what's best for the patient and we can actually not only speak up for ourselves, but be an advocate for the patient.
>> Oh, exactly.
>> Whether whether they say, you know what, long-term EEGs aren't necessary anymore. Well, no. we would definitely stand up against that and and try to fight that policy because we see the value.
>> Um so that's pretty that's that's you know great great advice is is to you know stand up and and be active in public policy. Are there any past advoc advocacy efforts that you are proud of or have been been involved in? Not necessarily in in any in in the neurodyiagnostic field, but give me an example about uh a time that you had when you really felt like you made a change.
>> Um I would have to go back to my days with the winery association.
>> Mhm.
>> We were working on the farm bill and uh the farm bill is uh reauthorized every 5 years and it primarily served um large crops like soybeans, cotton, rice, those typical.
>> Yeah.
>> We wanted Congress to include wine grapes and wine as a specialy crop in the farm bill so that we could have some programs for our research, marketing, strategic planning. So we worked as a coalition for specialty crops for three years.
>> Oh wow.
>> And at the end of that three years, Congress did include wine and wine grapes in the farm bill. And we do >> that industry did did have specific funding that they had never had before in the whole 60 plus years of farm bill history.
>> Wow.
>> So it was exciting.
>> Yeah, I'm sure that was a exciting time and everyone was really proud of the work that y'all did.
>> It it was great and that work continues. Um and I keep track of that just because if you have a success, you don't want to walk away from it and not look at it again. So I kind of >> keep keep looking seeing what they're doing.
>> Yeah.
>> So it's been really great.
>> What do you think some of the biggest policy or regulatory changes in the neuro diagnostics field has been? I think from what I've seen, I've been with ASET for seven years and I think some of the things that I have seen um are changes in definitions of certain professions or certain procedures and it would be really great if we could land on standardized descriptions, definitions. So, there seems to be a little struggle still in trying to narrow that down.
>> Yeah. And it changes constantly. It does and it depends on who's doing the talking and who's got the legislator's ear which is why we need to be there >> on the scene with that.
>> I know asset is involved in um legislation uh legislative efforts across many states. Can you give us an update on where lure or regulation efforts currently stand?
>> Certainly. Um at the current time no state has lure for the profession. We know that the California society is moving forward in their efforts to try to get lure. We know that there are some other states that are interested in moving forward with lure.
>> Um and you know we provide support for chapters or groups that want to move forward with that.
>> Um, it takes advocates, it takes money, and you know, you're fighting a climate of occupational lensure reform. So, that makes it more challenging to get occupational license related legislation passed because legislators are trying to get away from it.
>> So, it's it's been an uphill battle with that for the past several years.
>> Yeah. So, it sounds like there's limited resources in what you can do >> right now. And and you know when we were working um pursuing lure several years ago, one thing we discovered that no we didn't think about we wanted people to move forward and pursue lure but it didn't occur to us to figure that we needed to train them on how to be advocates and we didn't have the toolkits and the materials. So what we've done is take a couple of steps back and we've been focusing the past several years on let's make sure we've got a toolkit that the technologists can understand and utilize. Let's make sure we got our mentoring in place, you know, give them the tools and then we can move forward on lensure efforts.
>> So many different levels that have to take place before you can do some type of >> Exactly.
>> Um, with these limited resources, how do you prioritize what efforts you're going to tackle or take care of?
>> Well, we rely on feedback from our chapters. We have 14 chapters and they're the ones that are living the issues and out of, you know, if you have 14 chapters, you're getting a pretty good cross-section slice of what's going on out there. So, we do pay attention to that.
>> Now, do you have ongoing meetings? How do how does that information get across to you to y'all?
>> We we do have meetings. I sit on the chapter president's council meetings and um they can provide me information and then I can give them updates on what we're doing and so we keep that conversation going and that collaboration going.
>> Yeah, absolutely. Just thinking about how a tech can really advocate for their profession. What are some tangible ways that a tech can advocate for themselves or their profession, this amazing profession, even if they've never done it before?
>> Well, we actually have two advocacy committees at ASET. One is governmental that speaks to the legislators.
>> Um, and then one is the uh neurodyiagnostic awareness and patient advocacy committee, okay, that speaks to the workplace. So depending on what a technologist is comfortable with, we can provide them with the tools to go talk to the seauite to the administrators to the risk managers in the workplace or we can help them >> set up an advocacy day at their state legislature where a group of them go and hand out the collateral materials we've developed. So I call it a 360°ree advocacy program because we're dealing with inward facing and outward facing advocacy.
>> How does a tech plug into that again? Like how do they get it get their hands on those?
>> You usually what somebody will do is contact me and we figure out if they're interested in the in the inward or the outward.
>> Okay.
>> And then we um mentor them through the toolbox and explain how they use all of the pieces. It's one thing to hand somebody a toolkit and say, "Here you go."
>> But we have with our toolkit, here's how you use each piece.
>> Okay. Okay. Okay. So, it's broken down probably really easy to understand.
>> Okay.
>> Can you talk a little bit about the asset state liaison program um in particular how it like connects local texts with the broader policy initiatives?
>> Well, that was actually a program that we utilized more when we were pursuing lure as a bigger group. So, it's important to have a liaison in each state so that they can relay accurate information on what's going on,
>> what they're hearing at the legislature. And then we can funnel back the appropriate um information in terms of here's the collateral you need to use and here's the senator that you need to call because he chairs a committee we care about.
>> Oh, wow. Okay.
>> Okay. So, we're we're running out of time, but I want one more question to ask you because you raised a good little point. Would you say that that is the advice that you would give for someone who wants to advocate uh for lure or improving let's say work conditions in their state?
>> Um and and then really where should they start with that?
>> Given that you know a lot of people don't know what advocacy is and they don't know what materials to use. I think we're the starting point for that because that way everybody's singing from the same sheet of music using the same messaging. We're all moving to the same place. So, you know, reaching out to us, making sure that you get um the toolkit from us that you uh avail yourself of our mentoring. It's a really easy process. We had a big success with the proclamation campaign during neurodyiagnostic week.
>> Oh, wow.
>> We got this year we got proclamations from seven states and 28 cities.
>> Wow.
>> So, that's something we tout because that's an easy way for people to get involved in advocacy. And I'm hoping that once they get a taste of that success,
>> Yeah.
>> they'll want to ramp it up a little bit.
>> Absolutely. Absolutely. Well, you're doing great work. Thank you for explaining it what your work actually is.
>> Um this is a fascinating topic. If anyone wants to reach out to you about uh you know advocacy or or just interested in what you're doing, how do they get a hold of you?
>> I am very easy to find. It's jenniferasset.org.
>> That's easy.
>> Very easy.
>> Jenniferasset.org. org. Okay, reach out to her if you have any questions about how to advocate for uh this amazing uh industry that we're in. And Jennifer, it's been an absolute pleasure talking with you again. Thanks for taking your time out and uh we'll see you around.
>> Great. Thank you. It was great to meet you.
>> Well, thank you. Thank you everyone.
[Applause]