Articles from prior issues of The Advocate

September/October, 1999

MASH - Profiling NADE's First Corporate Sponsor
by Robert Edwards, Southwest Publications Representative

IN 1991, THE FIRST CORPORATE membership awarded by NADE was given to Medical Advocacy Services for Healthcare, INC. (MASH). NADE presented this award to MASH for their “continued support of disability professionals and disabled individuals.” The MASH Program is now a silver corporate member and continues to actively participate in NADE’s training conferences at both Regional and National levels. As part of an ongoing effort to acquaint our members with different associations, whom NADE has recognized, we are profiling MASH this month.

Many of you may know MASH through Martha and Al Gonzales after visiting with them from conferences in Chicago to Albuquerque. They have become part of the NADE conference family if you will.

MASH is a group that is headquartered in Fort Worth, Texas and was founded in September 1988. MASH offers a fresh new approach to client representation. Their diverse staff provides expert representation to their clients – all without charge. MASH contracts with hospitals to represent their indigent patients for public benefits; thereby providing a payment source for unpaid hospital bills. The MASH program combines the concept of a single point of representation with high-level, well-trained advocacy expertise in many different disciplines such as law, medicine, government administration and social services. Using this knowledge, their Advocates stand hand-in-hand with their client to guide claims through the complex agency systems. MASH Advocates do more than “complete forms.” Their probing questions elicit essential symptoms and impairment impact that often fail to surface in generalist interviews. MASH analyzes medical records and often supplements them with additional information. The MASH Advocates are especially careful to compare the claimant’s limitations with functional capacity expectations so that they can convincingly explain the claimant’s functional impairments.

MASH professional staff is predominately college educated with over 350 years of hands-on, agency expertise. Their government experience includes the Social Security Administration, the Texas Department of Human Services (TDHS), the Texas Indigent Health Care Program (TIHC), the Health Care Financing Administration (HCFA) and various Disability Determination Services. The staff balance is carefully maintained to provide the maximum in “cross training”. Advocates serve as references for each other in screening and problem solving activities. The diversity of the experience of the staff is the key to the MASH success story. In the past 10 years, MASH has helped over 25,000 people qualify for Medicaid. Moreover, their Advocates have assisted more than 9,000 people with SSI applications – some of which were approved after one of the Advocates represented the claimant’s case before a SSA Administrative Law Judge. This experience has taught MASH that many self-pay patients lack the tenacity and/or the capacity for self-representation. This is especially true for disabled adults and par

ents of disabled children; they have faced poverty and sickness so long that they have lost much of their self-esteem and assertiveness.

The MASH program has offices in Texas including Dallas, Fort Worth, Mesquite, Waxahachie, Waco, Houston, and Amarillo. MASH also has an office in Albuquerque, New Mexico. Many former disability examiners work for MASH. Joanna Gisch and Sandy Tyler worked for the Louisiana DDS; Rick Fairbanks worked for the New Mexico DDS; Beth Keating worked for both the Maryland and Connecticut DDSs; Joyce Burnside worked for the Washington DDS, Wilma Poel worked for the Michigan and North Carolina DDS; Cheryl Oluytian worked for the Michigan and Georgia DDS and for the Texas ODH. Lastly, Martha Gonzales worked for the Louisiana and Texas DDSs. NADE is proud to have MASH as a Corporate Sponsor and looks forward to a continuing productive relationship with this organization.