BOH minutes 012899 - Laserfiche WebLink

Browse Search

MINUTES ORANGE COUNTY BOARD OF HEALTH January 28, 1999 Board of Health Minutes Transcription completed by Patsy L. Bateman 3 January 28, 1999 Orange County Health Department work toward fully integrating clinic services by 6/30/2000. This would mean offering all the different services on an everyday basis. Child health and prenatal programs have already been integrated. The third part of the recommendation is to include the cost for after hour coverage arrangements for all patients in the next fiscal year budget, beginning in July. This is in place for prenatal clients, but not for child health or family planning, etc. UNC Healthlink will be explored as an after-hour coverage option. Rosemary will explore the possibility of having Economic Development conduct a county-wide survey to see how many people are insured and uninsured to get a better sense of what we are faced with county-wide. B. PERSONAL HEALTH REORGANIZATION This reorganization started back in the summer after the strategic planning discussion. A staff group was pulled together representing a variety of levels within Personal Health to look at “clinic assessment.” That group held a series of discussions at which they looked at the core functions and essential services adopted by the Board and the statutory requirements that the Orange County Health Department has for mandated services. This proposed reorganization is at the conceptual level. This is an administrative move that will not increase or decrease current staff members. The goal of the proposed reorganization is to divide the programs and functions into two primary areas, those primarily clinic-based and those primarily community-based. The rationale behind this is that currently the structure includes a mix of both clinic and community programs. Programs have been added over the years and each of the programs added more requirements, etc., but no additional staff was added. Issues, needs, and objectives expressed by administration and staff were discussed. Some of those include: increasing demands on staff, staff working with both clinic and community programs, crosstraining of staff, unclear supervisory lines, authority and responsibility, integrated clinics, efficient and effective utilization of staff, communication among staff and programs, streamlining paperwork, and management support needs. The next step of the reorganization is to identify a “clinical staff” and a “community staff”. There will be some services where staff will work in both areas. Discussions have begun with Personnel as this should be “position neutral” in terms of classification of positions. The goal is not to have budgetary impacts. Eileen Kugler and Rosemary Summers have spoken with John Link and Albert Kittrell in regard to the conceptual plan so they will have a clear understanding. The next step will be putting parameters around this concept to talk with staff about where they would like to be, i.e. clinical or community. There is no guarantee that everyone will get what they want, but consideration will be taken in this regard as to the wants of individual staff. This will be presented to the Personal Health staff at their division meeting in February. C. NEW POSITION REQUESTS The budget process this year is an earlier time frame than it was last year. The new position requests were due into the budget office on January 4, 1999 and the capital improvement plan projects were due on January 11, 1999. There is still the opportunity to withdraw positions that have been submitted or to further develop or change them. This year in April, the Board of Commissioners is going to consider new positions separate from the regular budget process. The entire budget is due into the budget office on March 15, 1999, which means the Board of Health will receive it for review at the February 25, 1999 meeting.