BOCC to consider Public Health consolidation with Walla Walla County

DAYTON–The Board of County Commissioners met with the Walla Walla County Commissioners on February 16 to discuss possible consolidation of Department of Health services.

Administrative Support Supervisor for Walla Walla Health Department, Nancy Wenzel, and Interim Public Health Director for Columbia County, Delphine Bailey, provided information for the Commissioners to consider to help decide if they should move forward with developing a plan for consideration.

Walla Walla County Commissioners Gregory Tompkins, Jennifer Mayberry and Todd Kimball hosted Columbia County Commissioners for a hybrid meeting at their office on February 16.

Wenzel suggested they consider consolidating the environmental health and communicable disease services. Tompkins asked Wenzel, “In this document you provided us that’s highlighting, Columbia County refused January through June 2022 funding due to lack of ability to spend and Walla Walla only received half due to our inability to spend. There’s nothing I hate worse than sending back money to the State of Washington. If there was an agreement in place, do you think that you can bill the services and use this money to bolster both of our county’s programs?”

“Yes, and I have talked to...the State just to ask, ‘How would this look,” Wenzel answered. “What they suggested is if we want to do this that we work with them...to build this into the Statement of Work and make it effective like July 1,” she said.

“That would give us time to figure out what kind of positions we need to hire,” he continued. “It’ll give the...State people time to work on getting the foundational public health money a Statement of Work made and put together a shared service...This is absolutely what they see happening with this foundational public health money for smaller counties.”

Washington State HB 1152 passed in May of 2021, to establish shared services to help districts with fewer resources. “The other part of this is...the State is...talking about the districts they’re creating,” Wenzel said. “Even though HB 1152–everyone thought that the State districts went away. They didn’t. They have to create at least two, if not four, and so they’re setting up those districts now...They will be funding a health officer and an administrator in these regions...If we could solidify our shared agreement before the other districts get created by the State, it would booster our ability to maintain some of that local control. Because I do wonder if the State has these regional offices and they see counties struggling specially to do their foundational public health what that would look like–is that something the State is going to intervene in?”

The other option to better utilize state funds, according to Wenzel, is for Columbia County to build up its own environmental health program and hire people for that task, but, Wenzel said, “then you are always going to be like us–you’re always going to be short-staffed; people are going to be gone, people are going to quit–we could build up a robust system to do both of the counties.”

Bailey said they have contracted environmental health services with Walla Walla County already, and consolidating that program makes sense.

Wenzel added that if they also consolidated the communicable disease program, it could enable them to be more proactive rather than reactive. Bailey said that other than COVID, there isn’t a strong demand for the program in the County.

Both counties are already receiving money for shared services for the community health assessment improvement plan for which Walla Walla County is the lead. Wenzel suggested that further consolidation should be considered to make the programs sustainable.

Commissioner Charles Amerein stated that a combined health district is another possibility as is the case for places like Benton and Franklin Counties and they could work with the State departments that have experience with this and to work within the established statutes. Wenzel affirmed this statement. The Commissioners said more discussion would be needed about this possibility. Bailey was not in favor of combining the health districts which would also mean one combined Board of Health.

“There is some money that could be better spent perhaps,” Amerein said, “but I don’t know necessarily that we have underserved yet. I think it’s going to take some sitting down and talking to our public health a little bit more in depth. More than anything else we are here to hear what you have to say about it.” “We’re not trying to take over anything,”

Tompkins was reassuring. “We’re trying to provide the best service for everybody,” he said. “We know how difficult it is with what we have for staffing and what we do. We’re just trying to help. If you’re going to contract with us on an hourly reimbursable and we have more stuff to do here than we can help you...I’m just looking at it as way for both us, and I don’t want to give the State back money, if we can build it so it benefits both of us.”

Commissioner Marty Hall added that it benefits and keeps the money in the region, and pointed out that Columbia County is finding it difficult to fill the vacant positions. Commissioner Ryan Rundell would want to see increased regular service over the current contracted services in effect now.

The Commissioners agreed that both health departments should meet to determine the feasibility of working to present information to them in a meeting in the next couple of months.