Agenda - 04-15-2014 - 5e - Laserfiche WebLink

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21 HHS-8: Increase Medicaid rates to cover costs. Support a rate increase for Medicaid services to at least cover cost of service. In an effort to curb Medicaid costs, legislative actions over the past 10 years routinely show a Medicaid service- provider rate reduction or a reduction in the inflationary increases for reimbursement rates, increases to keep pace with medical inflation. Despite a 50 percent plus increase in Medicaid clients, fewer physicians are choosing to treat Medicaid clients given lower reimbursement rates than that offered under private insurance plans. HHS-9: Support an increase in food and lodging inspection fees to cover costs. Seek legislation to increase food and lodging inspection fees or authorize county governments to charge cost-based fees for restaurant and facility inspections. Unlike other inspection fees such as building inspections fees that can be set to recover costs, food and lodging inspection fees are set statutorily and do not reflect county costs of inspections operations and administration. The state collects the current fee, which is set at $75 per annual business inspection, and returns 66 percent of these revenues to the county of origin. Not only is this fee well below actual inspections costs, no additional fees are permitted should county inspectors need to revisit an individual business multiple times to ensure compliance with health and safety regulations. HHS-10: Restore state funding of public health accreditation. Seek legislation to restore state funding for the state-mandated accreditation program for county public health departments. G.S. 130A-34.1 requires all local public health departments to obtain and maintain accreditation, which examines a local health department's capacity to provide essential public health services, its facilities and administration, its staffs' competencies and training procedures or programs and its governance and fiscal management. The process includes a self-assessment, a site visit by a team of experts to clarify, verify, and amplify the information in the self-assessment and accreditation approval by the Local Health Department Accreditation Board, which is housed and staffed by UNC's Institute for Public Health. Failure to obtain and maintain accreditation by July 1, 2014, will jeopardize state and federal funding for public health services. The 2012 State Appropriations Act eliminated the $300,000 in recurring funding to support UNC administration of the public health accreditation program. Intergovernmental Relations Legislative Goals IGR-1: Oppose any shift of state transportation responsibilities to counties. Oppose legislation to shift the state's responsibility for funding transportation construction and maintenance projects to counties. Counties cannot afford to assume costs for maintaining secondary roads and/or funding expansion projects. Unlike counties in other states, whose traditional funding responsibilities are secondary roads, North Carolina counties are responsible for the administration of local human services programs, and fund educational operating and capital expenses. The NCACC estimates that a transfer of secondary road maintenance responsibilities would cost counties more than $500 million annually. Some of the more rural counties would have to increase property taxes by as much as 30 cents to generate the amount of revenue needed to maintain the same level of service. IGR-2:Allow more cost effective methods for second primary elections.