Monday afternoon the Franklin County Board of Supervisors held a special meeting and continued to discuss the proposed idea of an agreement in which Franklin General Hospital would begin overseeing the public health and home care sectors, which also fall under the county board of health.
Franklin County Board of Supervisors Chairman Chris Vanness says he began meeting with hospital CEO Kim Price several months ago.
“If at any time when Kim and I were meeting, felt that he wasn’t, felt that they were trying to eliminate a program or eliminate people, I would have walked away at that time. I think it’s important that for me to look at this and then present it, whether we go forward with it or not or stay in the course, is up to the full board of supervisors and input from you. We’ve looked at, in my time on the board here, we’ve looked at a lot of funding cuts from the state. And is that going to equate down the road to funding cuts for the programs? I don’t know. I don’t want to see any of these programs go away. What I’ve heard in the past when they’ve tried some of these so-called mergers, that they were going to eliminate a program or maybe people. I did not want to see that happen. Now, if we stay the course where we are, couple years down the road, could that happen? I don’t know. But to me, it’s better to have a conversation when we can have control of the situation. And whether we move forward or not, that’s up to us, the board. I don’t like getting backed in the corner or I’m forced to make a decision that I don’t want to make.”
Donna Speedy, who retired from the public health department 20 years ago, had this to say.
“We’re going to keep these programs, we’re going to keep doing this, we’re going to keep doing that. No you’re not. I’ve seen that happen too. You get all kinds of promises because you want this to go through. I get the funding is not there statewide. I get that. It’s changed in the 20 years since I’ve not been in public health. I get that. But you can’t just walk in and say, oh we’ve got this proposal, we’ve got this draft. Select people, get it. Nobody gets to really sit down and look at it except to select a few that chose to go on their own and start the discussions. Where were the people that were really, really involved? If you don’t talk to the people that do it, how do you know how to do it? It looks good on paper. It looks good in a meeting. You gotta talk to the people doing the footwork. What’s gonna happen with the vaccines? What’s gonna happen to some of these other programs that I know are no longer there, but you still gotta go into these homes, and you can’t just, anybody cannot just walk into a home and say, I’m going to take care of you today. It takes time to build a rapport. It takes time to get the confidence of that person. You can’t just do that.”
No final decisions have been made by the Franklin County Board of Supervisors.
