Meet a Staff Member: Jeri Stastny

Meet Jeri Stastny, the Accreditation Coordinator here at The Bridge Behavioral Health! Jeri was recently promoted to the position after five years of leading staff and clients.

 Tell me a little about your background before The Bridge.

I have a BA in psychology. Before I started working here I worked with an agency that provided supervised visitation and family support for parents and children involved with Child and Family Services. While working there, I provided direct care to clients and helped them access community resources to meet their needs with the goal of reuniting the family. Eventually, I moved onto a supervisory position with that agency and led team workers in the Fremont and South Sioux City offices.

Before you were promoted to Accreditation Coordinator, what were your previous positions here at The Bridge?

When I first came to The Bridge, I was hired on as a the case manager for the residential treatment clients and I held that position for about 3.5 years before transitioning into the Technical Staff Coordinator position, which I then held that position for 1.5 years. This month, I have been working for The Bridge for 5 years!

When you served as the Technical Staff Coordinator, what was your favorite aspect?

My favorite part of the position was being involved in the daily activities of the agency. I liked seeing the details from client perspectives as well as from the front line staff’s perspectives and trying to problem solve or come up with different approaches to common problems.

As Accreditation Coordinator, what are your new duties?

The two biggest duties of this position are going to be implementing an Electronic Health Record and also ensuring we are doing what we need to do to maintain our CARF* accreditation. I imagine there will be more details to this position, such as being productive about how to integrate these two pieces— thinking about how technology can help us maintain our accreditation goals, or thinking about how to integrate other pieces such as best practices into the EHR and into our accreditation.

With your new position here at The Bridge, what are you most excited about?

In my history here, I have been lucky to work with clients, with staff, and now I am going to be working in more of an administrative role. I am excited to learn more about the agency from the administrative lens and to bring some of my ideas that are based in my experiences with clients or with staff to that administrative level.

What has it been like working at The Bridge for you personally?  

I have enjoyed my time at The Bridge quite a bit. I have been lucky to have some longevity here such that I have witnessed change. It is really inspiring to work somewhere that is not afraid of change, somewhere that accepts change as an adventure and necessary in order to continue to provide quality services.

CARF is the Commission on Accreditation of Rehabilitation Facilities. CARF provides accreditation standards, assists service providers in improving the quality of their services, demonstrating value, and meeting organizational and program standards. Being CARF accredited means The Bridge makes a commitment at all levels to provide quality services and enhance the lives of the people we serve.