Professional Staff
DMA consultants include Richard H. Dougherty, Ph.D., President, Wendy Holt, M.P.P., Principal, Sylvia B. Perlman, Ph.D. and D. Russell Lyman, Ph.D., Senior Associates and Deborah C. Strod, M.S.W., Associate. These consultants are supported by Diane Salley, Office Manager / Assistant, and Caroline Cutter, Assistant.
DMA frequently subcontracts with specialists from area universities, including Harvard University School of Medicine, the Harvard School of Public Health, Boston University, Brandeis University and consultants with health care, financial and data systems expertise. This permits the firm to maintain competitive costs and offer the highest quality services available.
Background information on the professional staff of the firm is outlined below.
Richard H. Dougherty, Ph.D., President
An
organizational
psychologist with significant experience in public sector
procurement, finance, Medicaid and child welfare policy, Dr.
Dougherty
has
consulted with businesses and government agencies to implement
strategies designed to manage health systems change and quality
improvement. Examples of current projects include: leadership
of two separate strategic planning and implementation projects for
the Massachusetts Department of Mental Health and the Bureau of
Substance Abuse Services of the Massachusetts Department of Public
Health; consultation to the City of Philadelphia on a Blue Ribbon
Commission for Children’s Behavioral Health; facilitation of the
8-County California Learning Collaborative for the California
Institute of Mental Health; leadership of the 2004 SAMHSA Consumer
Directed Services Initiative; and the planning and design of several
state managed care initiatives. DMA Health Strategies’ work
is perhaps best known through the four years of work on the
Children’s Mental Health Benchmarking Project, the planning
process and RFP development for San Diego County’s Administrative
Services Organization and for the procurement work on the
Massachusetts’ Medicaid carve-out and Massachusetts’ Commonworks
programs. Prior to forming DMA in 1987, Dr. Dougherty was a Senior
Manager at BDO/Seidman, Manager of Finance and member of the Board
of Directors of National Mentor, Inc. and Program Manager for the
Department of Social Services, in charge of residential procurement.
Dr. Dougherty has an A.B. with honors from Colgate University, an A.M. in Social Service Administration from the University of Chicago and a Ph.D. in Applied Social Psychology at Boston University. He has published extensively and presented at numerous national conferences. He is a member of the Children’s Outcomes Roundtable, the National Advisory Board of the Center for Healthcare Strategies Children in Managed Care program, Board member of Consumers for Health Care Choices, past Treasurer of the American College of Mental Health Administration and holds several other board and Officer positions in his local community.
Wendy Holt, M.P.P., Principal
Ms. Holt is a Principal at DMA Health Strategies. She has considerable analytical and operational experience in managed mental health, Medicaid managed care for people with disabilities and child welfare services. Ms. Holt’s work includes considerable focus on children’s mental health. She directed the fourth year of DMA’s Children’s Mental Health Benchmarking Project, and has assisted in two successful planning and proposal processes to develop systems of care for youth and young adults with mental health problems. She continues to work closely with the Center for Advancing Children’s Mental Health at Columbia University and the University of Minnesota Center for Adolescent Substance Abuse Research to develop technical assistance materials for SAMHSA to increase early identification of mental health and substance abuse problems in children. The settings considered in this work include primary care, schools, child welfare and juvenile justice. Other current projects include: collaborating with the University of South Florida to conduct an independent assessment of New Jersey’s system of care for children; consultation to a new behavioral health care organization preparing a bid for the TennCare RFP; a multi-year review of a major Massachusetts HMO’s provision of care after its receivership; and analysis of financial trends in Massachusetts human service providers on an annual basis for a Massachusetts trade association.
Prior to joining DMA, Ms. Holt served as Manager of Policy and Planning at MHMA, the first statewide Medicaid behavioral health carve out in the nation. In that position, she had key roles in network development, provider performance profiling, client outcomes measurement, outpatient utilization management, and CQI team leadership. Ms. Holt also served as Director of Administration and Finance for a mental health clinic and Supervising Management Auditor at the State Auditor’s Office. She has experience in a variety of analytic and evaluation approaches including performance and financial contract audits, program evaluation, needs assessment, and program design.
Ms. Holt has a B.A. in Economics from the University of Wisconsin, and a Masters degree in Public Policy from the Kennedy School of Government at Harvard.
Ms. Holt has presented in recent years on DMA’s benchmarking work in Medicaid managed care and on children’s mental health, and has collaborated with Columbia University to present on early identification of children’s mental health problems in primary care and schools.
Sylvia B. Perlman, Ph.D., Senior Associate
Sylvia B. Perlman, Ph.D., is a Senior Associate at DMA Health Strategies. For the past 15 years, she has worked in the field of mental health and substance abuse. During that time her experience has been varied; it has included work for a statewide trade association, for a large provider organization and as a consultant. Her recent and current projects at DMA Health Strategies include a study of Massachusetts’s first jail diversion program conducted for the private agency that operates the program; major responsibility for preparing the background narrative in support of a state substance abuse planning initiative; consultation and major writing responsibility for proposals by public agencies and private organizations to public and private funders; a study for The Commonwealth Fund of promising state innovations in behavioral health care; development of a series of brief papers for employers summarizing the literature on treatment for substance use disorders, for the Center for Substance Abuse Treatment; and a major role in the Children’s Mental Health Benchmarking Project, funded primarily by the Annie E. Casey Foundation.
For the trade association, Mental Health and Substance Abuse Corporations of Massachusetts (originally Mental Health Corporations of Massachusetts), she was responsible for offering technical assistance to executive directors regarding regulations, billing and managed care. She planned training sessions, meetings and conferences; prepared written analyses of policies; staffed committees on children’s clinical issues, Medicaid policy, quality management, and corporate compliance (including HIPAA compliance); and initiated and managed an association-wide project on outcome measurement.
Dr. Perlman received her A.B. degree from Smith College, Magna cum Laude, and her Ph.D. from Brandeis University. She is a member of Phi Beta Kappa. She currently serves on the Board of Directors of Consumer Quality Initiatives, a consumer-directed organization; and a member of the Board Quality Improvement Committee of Jewish Family and Children’s Service of Greater Boston. She has previously served on numerous boards and committees. She has published on a variety of topics in numerous journals, and has presented at many local and national conferences.
D. Russell Lyman, Ph.D.
Dr. Lyman is a clinical psychologist with over 30 years of experience in mental health and developmental services. Dr. Lyman has consulted to community-based mental health programs, child care settings, shelters, after school programs, schools and large human service agencies. Prior to becoming a consultant, Dr. Lyman worked in senior management, as a clinical director, chief operating officer and vice president for research and strategic initiatives at a major child and family developmental and mental health service agency in the Boston area. He has authored and won multiple service contracts and federal grants with the federal administration, for Children, Youth and Families, Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration, and mental health, mental retardation, child welfare and public health state agencies. Initiatives he has been responsible for include Head Start expansion, universal newborn home visiting, Early Intervention, Healthy Families, child welfare intensive family service management, mental health intensive family intervention, school-based violence prevention, child witness to violence, supervised visitation and cross-cultural programs.
Dr. Lyman is a B.A. graduate of Yale University and earned an M.Ed. in Counseling from the Harvard Graduate School of Education and a Ph.D. in Clinical Psychology from Boston University Graduate School. He is currently a Visiting Scholar at the Tufts University Eliot Pearson Department of Child Development, and a Clinical Instructor in Psychology at the Harvard Medical School. He has also been a 2005-2006 ZERO TO THREE Harris Mid-Career Leaders of the 21st Century Fellow, through which he has received training in public policy, strategic framing, and early childhood service and research development. He is currently implementing Blue Cross and Blue Shield of Massachusetts Foundation early identification mental health screening pilots and research in child care, pediatric practice and Early Intervention. Dr. Lyman is an active Board member of Bay Cove, Inc. a human service agency, and Trustees of Reservations, a Massachusetts land conservation organization. Dr. Lyman has presented nationally on early identification and mental health systems of care, and has published internationally on community based intervention and system of care development.
Deborah C. Strod, M.S.W., Associate
Deborah Strod recently joined the firm. Active in town politics, Ms. Strod and Dr. Dougherty co-chaired the Town of Lexington Health Benefits Committee that prepared a landmark report reviewing health insurance costs for Lexington and approximately 20 neighboring communities and outlining the strategic options for the town. Her work experience involves ten years of progressive responsibility at Massachusetts General Hospital in their Center for Integration of Medicine and Innovative Technology and the Office of Technology Affairs. In various positions from 1991 to 2001, she was responsible for conducting scientific forums, facilitating development of innovative technologies, managing intellectual property, participating in continuous quality improvement and negotiating industry-sponsored research agreements including clinical trials. She has her Masters in Social Work concentrating in Group Work and Community Organization and Planning from the Boston University School of Social Work and her B.A. Magna Cum Laude from Harvard College in History and Science.
Diane Salley, B.A., Office Manager/Assistant
Ms. Salley is responsible for monitoring, tracking, invoicing and reporting on the financial aspects of contracts and subcontracts to ensure adherence to budgets and contract requirements. She also maintains the functions of our office including accounting and time reporting systems, proposal coordination, and human resource functions. Ms. Salley supports the analytic functions of the team with her mastery of word processing, data collection, data base management, financial spreadsheets, flow charting software, and project management programs.
Her prior experience includes 14 years with the defense contractor Loral Infrared Imaging Systems (formerly Honeywell) where she performed time studies, program planning activities, coordination of proposal efforts, and evaluation of program management and proposal software tools.
Caroline Cutter, B.A., Assistant
Ms. Cutter provides additional support in word processing and spreadsheet development. Her prior experience involves twenty years in the fields of biological research and quality control at Genzyme Corporation, Warner-Lambert/Parke Davis, and the University of Michigan Medical School.