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MINUTES ORANGE COUNTY BOARD OF HEALTH JUNE 25, 1998 Board of Health Minutes Transcription completed by Patsy L. Bateman 2 JUNE 25, 1998 have a Public Health Liaison member of that group. This block grant comes through a regional arrangement and is primarily for adult services in the home. Right now, most of that money goes to the Aging Department and Department of Social Services. If the Health Department had a Home Health Agency, we would be eligible for funds as well. We have chosen not to enter into that area at this point. The Committee would still like to have a Public Health Liaison be a member. This meeting would take place twice a year. EXPANSION OF WTMP This report is a result of several committee discussions. This is an expansion report in essence. This is not something the staff is asking to do. This report is a response to questions that came up at the joint County Commissioners and OWASA meeting and subsequent Board of Health meeting as to what would be involved to expand out to include all systems in the County. Would we want to go back and revisit the proposal based on new information? Tax bills this year will include pieces of education materials for the Environmental Health Department. One piece of educational material will be septic tank maintenance and well maintenance. Before this material is sent to the public, we need to have a response plan all ready. There is a graduate student working in Environmental Health helping develop an educational/informational pamphlet. The student is also working to update the Orange County Home Page and the Environmental Health Division Home page on the Web. Is it fair to ask the citizens to pay extra money for inspections on a periodic basis and what is the County willing to pay a percentage of? After much discussion regarding WTMP, it was decided to further research different areas, including problem areas and bring this matter before the Board again soon. This matter will be placed on the Commissioner’s agenda for reports. VISIONING PROJECT (NCALHD) The Health Directors’ have met twice with Health Quest, the consulting group which pulled these recommendations together. We’re going to meet again in July to go over the recommendations and many Health Directors’ were unhappy because they received the document the day before the meeting. There was not sufficient time for the Directors’ to review, research, or share this information. At the July meeting we will once again discuss this information. This report is something requested by Health Director’s and Health Quest was paid to pull together these recommendations. Within this document it discusses restructuring of public health rather than a vision for where public health is going. This is a concern. What this document is pushing is public health integrated service areas, aka, public health authority. Public health authority is not a BOH, it is a separate legal entity from what is currently a BOH. It is a separate legislation set up essentially health authorities that can function on their own without the participation if so wished, of County Commissioners. In one way a public health authority gets public health out from under and that’s the term often used, “out from under”, local politicians. This is a combination approach that they are in fact pushing public health integrated service areas as a public health authority but is not on a county level, it is on a regional level, a multi-county level. They believe this will make public health more competitive, more able to work in a managed care environment. This is the thrust of why they would like to do this. They’re recommending that there be no more than 18 across the State, which is a far cry from our 87 health departments/districts that we have. It is suggested that these integrated service areas be organized around consumer patterns of care. They are asking the undefined triangle whether we would be going to act as a demonstration site for this project.. The reason that they think a pilot project would be worth it in the triangle area is because they’re easy access in relationship to the State. It looks like they’re proposing a fast track and that all the changes and the structure be completed by the year 2000. They still would like to have local funding. They are asking the BOCC to fund the local areas. What is being proposed is that these structures have local programs but all of the rule making authority is at the regional level. None of the rule making is at the local level, but the local BOCC would fund public health preventive programs. Each regional board would have 8 county commissioner members on the regionals rule making board (1