Agenda - 08-19-2008 - 3c - Laserfiche WebLink

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2 relationship between the Board of Health, the health director and the county commissioners. • The community is well represented on the Board of Health and the Board has appropriately acted on community priorities. • Community Partners were generous with praise for the Health Department and valued their associations with the department. Community partners trust and support the Health Department and respect and appreciate the department's participation in community initiatives. Community partners stated the Health Department uses resources wisely. • The Health Department has worked with and contributed to the development of a strong Health Carolinians partnership with an impressive membership and participation rate. • The Health Department is to be commended for its efforts in developing ~a Volunteer Corp and for their ongoing outreach to sustain the Corp. • The department has worked to develop a broad and varied pool of qualified contract interpreters, not only with the Spanish speaking population, but also with a growing Burmese, Karan speaking population. Recently, three new contract Karan Interpreters were recruited and qualified for interpretation. • The clinical health services team is impressive, providing services at both the Hillsborough and Southern Human Services Center (SHSC) locations with a limited number of full time nurses (4) and nurse practitioners (3). • The home visit staff working with clients in the Maternal Care Coordination, Intensive Home Visiting and Child Service Coordination are allowed and encouraged to flex their hours in order to meet the needs of families that work the traditional hours of 8:00 am - 5:00 pm. Staff members that make evening hour visits have a safety plan in place to assure check-in after evening visits are complete. The Orange County Health Department met 100% of all benchmarks and activities and was accredited by the NC Accreditation Board for Local Health Departments on July 18 for a four year period. The plaque for achieving accredited status will be presented by the NC Accreditation Agency. The Department will be due for re-accreditation in 2012. FINANCIAL IMPACT: There was a financial impact associated with becoming accredited, including facility improvements and personnel costs. However, the State provided cone-time allocation of $25,000 to help defray the costs for first-time accreditation. These funds allowed the department to come into compliance with some of the requirements that had been unfulfilled. RECOMMENDATION(S): The Manager recommends that the Board commend the Health Department for its achievement as an Accredited Health Department and accept the plaque designating this achievement.