Today the Franklin County Board of Supervisors approved to move forward with a proposed Community Health Agreement between the Franklin County Board of Health and Franklin General Hospital.
Franklin County Board of Supervisors Chairman Chris Vanness tells RadioOnTheGo News about how this idea started.
“Couple years ago, Kim Price with Franklin General Hospital and myself were on another board and we were talking, we were giving updates and I updated that with House File 718 and then the loss of our backfill monies that you know the county would be looking at. Having to keep a real close eye on our budgets going forward, well then that was kind of how this started. He says well maybe we can work together on public health and homemakers or home care. So he and I kind of began a conversation to see where it may go, and then, we brought it out publicly last April and then that brought in the Board of Health and they’ve come to this agreement now since that time frame.”
Vanness says there is still more work to be done.
“We need to look at the financials and then also we need to look at how our employees, we may help them transition. The biggest thing is the agreement when we always talked about this prior to this, we were always concerned about the employees. We want them to have the opportunity to have the same jobs, same pay and that kind of stuff. But there is a disparity between like our health insurance and theirs. And then, you know, we have employees, long-term employees that have saved up a lot of sick leave and normally an employee when they leave they lose that if they retire. So we’re looking at ways of maybe letting them have some of that.”
All three supervisors approved of moving forward with the proposed agreement today.
The meeting minutes can be found below:
