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MINUTES ORANGE COUNTY BOARD OF HEALTH January 28, 1999 Board of Health Minutes Transcription completed by Patsy L. Bateman 2 January 28, 1999 The Board of Health approved the addition of the Commission on Environment (ERCD Board) as a new liaison role. The Board approved the placement/replacement of Board members as members on or as liaisons only to various other Boards. In the Liaison Only role, each Board member is responsible for receiving minutes from these organizations or otherwise keeping abreast of issues that would be relevant to the health department. The board member is not responsible for attending meetings of these groups unless a specific issue is identified. IV. REPORTS A. CHILDREN’S HEALTH PROGRAMS Surveys were completed by parents of Health Department patients. A meeting was held with another private provider, Chapel Hill Pediatrics. They indicated they would be willing to take children with Medicaid and NC Health Choice, but since they don’t have a sliding fee scale, they didn’t feel they would be able to take uninsured patients. Chapel Hill Pediatrics is possibly moving their practice to the Timberlyne area. Three of the practices met with are willing to take children that are insured either through Medicaid or NC Health Choice and other private insurances. Other practices have indicated they would be willing to take some of the uninsured (Women’s and Children’s Clinic in Hillsborough and Orange Family Medicine in Hillsborough). A focus group was held last week with mothers of young children. Highlights from the focus group included: ♦ Some children would be left without a source of care if we closed children’s clinical services. ♦ Message that Health Department doesn’t care about patients who can’t access other care. ♦ Parents are likely to seek care elsewhere as well or go without. An attempt was made to get some feedback from two community groups who had meetings in January. One group is the Orange County Coalition which is a combination of community members and agency members. The other is the United Voices of Efland and this group is made up of all community members. Both groups understood and appreciated the constraints that the Health Department was facing and support was given to the department to make the best decision based on the information available. Both groups did state that their members did not include parents of young children and they encouraged the Health Department to try and get more input from parents of young children. This generated a move to doing the surveys with parents of young children at churches in northern Orange. The Efland group favors the decision to suspend children’s clinical services only if they could be assured that medical care would be available from private physicians and also that transportation would be a concern if all the available medical care were in the southern part of the county. The Board requested additional data be collected by the Health Department. The Board would like to know how many children are NC Health Choice, how many are Medicaid, and how many are uninsured. Patient information forms will contain a question asking if they are covered through NC Health Choice, Medicaid, private insurance, or no insurance coverage. Recommendation To The Board of Health: While private providers are willing to take children with insurance coverage, placement of children without insurance remains uncertain. Short of having formal agreements with private providers to accept Health Department child patients, the staff cannot recommend discontinuing child health services at this time. It is recommended that child health services continue through the next fiscal year, 1999-2000 and during that time, the