Beverly A. Denef

Beverly A. Denef Director, Clinical Services, Preferred Home Health Care

As director of clinical services for Preferred Home Health Care in Central New Jersey, which has a corporate staff of 40 to 45 people and a field staff of 1,500 part-time employees, Beverly still finds time to put in a full shift as a bedside nurse.  Each Sunday, she takes a break from administrative duties to attend to a long-time patient who has Lou Gehrig's disease and is a quadriplegic on a ventilator.

"The major component of health care is managed care.  You are given a specific sum of money and you take care of the whole patient for this sum.  Under managed care, each provider has to look at three questions:

• 'What am I doing - is it appropriate?'
• 'Am I having effective outcomes?'
• 'Is it cost-effective?'

"If we don't do that, none of us - I don't care if we're a hospital or a nursing home or a home health care agency - is going to survive.  That's where the Rutgers business degree came in for me.  Looking at health care services in this way is a direct result of my MBA.  I would not have had those insights before."