WV Rural Health Education Partnerships
State Advisory Panel
Meeting Minutes
May 17, 2004
Members in Attendance: Tom Hefner, Alison Witte, Imogene Foster, Dennis McCutcheon, Richard Mecksroth, Sandra Pope, Kathryn Greenlief, Mike Adelman, Norman Ferrari, Ann Reynolds, JoAnn Raines, Carla See, Ralph Utzman
Guests in Attendance: Hilda Heady, Georgianna Tillis, Stephanie Schuler, Anna Reno, Jon Willis, Connie Simmons, Brenda Michael, Elaine Mason, Stephen Thomas, Sarah Miller, Lora Adkins, Alicia Tyler, Judy Koehler, Elizabeth Richmond, Gail McClung, April Vestal, Debbie Curry, Carla Campbell, Derrick Day, Helen Baker, Barry Linger, Dan Brody, Parr Thacker, Jane Sullivan, Chris Corcoren, Lorenzo Pence, Rosie Cannarella, Jacquelynn Copenhaver, Shannon Bell, Malinda Turner, Margaret Novacich
Introductions of any new members or guests:
Chris Corcoren, Health Promotion Specialist with the Bureau for Public Health introduced himself.
Call to Move the Consent Agenda
The consent agenda was approved as presented. (Ferrari/Pope)
Finance Committee
Margaret Novacich provided the report for the finance committee. She commented that the Chairman, Bobby Brown was unable to attend the meeting due to a prior commitment out of the country. Novacich reported that the committee reviewed the task force recommendations and activities. The finance committee will be following the progress of the task force recommendations to monitor the cost savings. The committee will be requiring bi-monthly reports from the consortia affected by the recommendations. The committee also reviewed and approved the 3rd quarter consortium reports and reviewed policies 2003-05 Purchase of Capital Assets and 2001-04 Expenditure Documentation. Both were revised to no longer permit the purchase of capital assets and will be presented to the advisory panel in July. The 2003-03 policy “Budget Request Process” is in the process of being revamped and the revised policy should be presented to the advisory panel also in July. The committee is going to look at the frozen fund balances and recommendations of the task force committee. A sub-committee has been formed and so far David Hughes, Parr Thacker, Carla Campbell and Chuck Conner have volunteered to be on the committee. We still have openings on that subcommittee. If anyone is interested contact Carla Campbell, Chuck Connor, Parr Thacker, or David Hughes who has agreed to chair the subcommittee.
School Committee
Imogene Foster, chair of the School Committee gave the report. Foster went over the needlestick policy that will be prepared and presented to the advisory panel for approval at the July or September meeting. The committee received information from Barry Linger and Rosie Cannarella at their meeting today on the curriculum of the Eastern Division. This is a traditional three year curriculum. The Eastern panhandle has a special 24 week module and would like to offer one month credit in RHEP to the third year students. This would require a variance to the current RHEP policy. The schools committee reviewed the request for variance and recommended to approve. Hilda Heady, Executive Director must approve all variances. The committee is also looking at the question of what constitutes a rotation as specified in policy 98-02 “Minimal Requirements for RHEP Student Status” The committee is also discussing the idea of developing a policy for field faculty on appointments to make sure we are in full compliance with all field faculty having an appointment from each of the schools for accreditation purposes.
The committee reviewed the issue of restricted cities and tabled it this meeting, but will be looking at this and developing a criteria for discussion at future meetings.
The committee reviewed the restructuring task force recommendations and presented a recommendation from the School Committee to include Martinsburg on the list of restricted cities. There was a motion and second to include the city of Martinsburg on the restricted city list. (Foster/Ferrari). The advisory panel discussed the motion. A comment was made that we do now have a campus based clinical setting there. Jodie Jackson commented that Berkeley County is federally designated as metropolitan and that, of the three cities (Beckley, Lewisburg and Martinsburg) that have come under question as to whether they should be restricted or not, only Berkeley County has a metropolitan designation. Dr. Adelman commented that he felt Martinsburg should not be a restricted city. There were questions about when this would take effect. Hilda commented that if Martinsburg is placed on this list it would not take place until July 2005 and that current scheduled rotations would not be affected. This would just be for the city of Martinsburg only and not for the surrounding areas. Dr. Adelman felt that if we do this with Martinsburg than it will set up a domino effect for the rest of the areas. Dr. Ferrari commented that Martinsburg has been discussed as being a restricted city for the past 12 years. It is also currently pending HPSA de-designation. The motion to add Martinsburg to the restricted cities list carried with nay votes from Kathryn Greenlief and Mike Adelman.
Recommendation of
Restructuring Task Force
Hilda discussed the meetings of the task forces and the recommendations passed by the committee. Hilda said she met with the Chair of the Senate Education committee on February 16 and he stated that RHEP had to look at cost savings measures and implement these immediately. Twenty-six partners volunteered to be on the WVRHEP Task Force in March that would look at mergers, consolidations and other cost saving measures. The Task Force members met on March 29, 2004. On March 30, 2004, a small group of the Task Force met to finalize recommendations and discussions that came out of the larger group. This Executive Council agreed to take the recommendations forth. The Task Force agreed that they would not meet again unless the Executive Council felt it was needed. The Task Force met again on April 20 and May 11 and finalized the recommendations submitted here today to the Advisory Panel for vote.
Hilda explained that the recommendations are in two
sections. The first five elements of the
proposal are for overall program quality improvement and the second set of
recommendations are for mergers and consolidations.
1. Baker-Brody-Jackson Medical Student Distribution plan – The medical distribution plan originally included capping medical student rotations by 15%. An alternative plan accepted by the committee, the Baker-Brody-Jackson Medical Student Distribution Plan, was felt to be a better plan, providing students with a choice of sites as opposed to a cap.
2. Combine RHEP and AHEC staff positions - Sharing personnel, whenever possible as we do not have mirrored positions in RHEP and AHEC.
3. Enhance the Interdisciplinary Educational component of the curriculum – Hilda explained that there is a revised policy on interdisciplinary experiences that will broaden the current policy on IDS and allow students to count other interdisciplinary experiences such as shadowing or service learning experiences with another discipline to meet their 20% curricular component in this area. Some sites are fully implementing this policy while others are not. This recommendation specifies that this implementation should happen program-wide.
4. Develop and implement Summer Placements in Rural Interdisciplinary Teams (SPIRIT) – Hilda said this is a new summer placement program for rising 2nd year medical students, many students work in the summer and this is the only summer in which medical students are free for such rotations. We have referred this to the Site Coordinators and School Committee for comment and further suggested development. We are looking at 4-6 week rotations in the 2005-06 academic year.
5. Explore partnering with the regional workforce investment boards—Henry Taylor has been working closely with them and some consortia have already begun partnerships in this area. Dr Taylor and a group of site coordinators will be developing this recommendation further.
Hilda asked the advisory panel how they would like to vote on the recommendations. There was a motion to do the first five as a group then the second five as a group. (Reynolds/Ferrari). Steve Thomas commented that it would be difficult to vote on the five recommendations as a whole. After further discussion, Reynolds rescinded her motion. There was a motion and second to vote on each one separately (Foster/Ferrari). The motion passed unanimously.
1. Baker-Brody-Jackson Medical Student Distribution Plan - There was a motion and second to accept this recommendation with the exception that Martinsburg now be added to the restricted cities list. (Foster/Adelman). The motion passed unanimously.
There was a motion and second to accept this recommendation as written (Ferrari/Raines). The motion passed unanimously.
4. Develop and Implement Summer Placements in Rural Interdisciplinary Teams (SPIRIT) - Joann Raines made a motion to amend wording on this recommendation. There was a motion to accept this recommendation with the following change: to delete the sentence “This program could further be expanded and marketed as a rural experience to out of state and off-shore medical students in their first and second years” (Ferrari/Raines). Kathryn pointed out that there was discussion in the last executive council meeting that the schools not give credit to the students doing rural rotations in this three month period. There was a motion to take this out (Greenlief/Witte). JoAnn objected to the motion saying that credits should be allowed because the credits are an extra incentive for the students. The motion was defeated.
Ferrari made the motion to accept the recommendation and put RHEP/AHEC and strike the and/or possibly financial incentives and just put OR. Adelman seconded the motion (Ferrari/Adelman). The motion passed unanimously. This recommendation will be referred to the School Committee and Site Coordinators for further development and implementation.
5. Explore partnering with the regional workforce investment boards - Imogene moved to accept this recommendation as written (Foster/Ferrari). The motion passed unanimously.
Mergers and
Consolidations
1. Consolidate MHC, LKA and ROVER resources into one consortium following the NWVRHEC (Northern AHEC) 23 county service area – There was a motion to accept the recommendation as written. (Adelman/Ferrari). It was noted that “Camden” should be “Cameron” in this paragraph. It was discussed that a consortium of this size might be unwieldy. How would you have a board? Hilda stated that it is being done now with the Northern AHEC board. Alison Witte commented that the AHEC board does not need as much community representation as the RHEP boards do and that community members time for meetings would be doubled. Hilda commented that this recommendation came from the resolution response from Mountain Health’s board. Tom said that he made this motion back in 2002, but at that time it did not happen. Shannon Bell commented that perhaps the site coordinator positions could be restructured into other roles other than recruitment and retention specialists based on the needs of the consortium. There might be other needs such as a grant writer or curriculum coordinator etc. Witte said she was not convinced this recommendation was going to help anything or meet the demands of the legislature for refunding. The motion passed with 7 for and 5 against.
2. Merge Webster-Nicholas and Rivers & Bridges Consortia - There was a motion to accept the recommendation as written (Ferrari/Mecksroth). Jacquelyn made the comment that the Webster-Nicholas and R&R boards have been meeting and discussing this and things seemed to be going smoothly and in unison. The motion passed unanimously.
3. Merge Cabwaylingo and Western Counties Consotium - There was a motion and second to accept the recommendation as written. (Adelman/Ferrari). The motion passed unanimously.
4. Merge Kanawha Valley Health Consortium and Winding Roads Consortium - There was a motion to accept the recommendation as written (Adelman/Ferrari). Kathryn Greenlief made the motion to strike “into recruitment and retention specialists for those positions covering the counties most in need of recruitment” and replace with “to meet local needs” (Greenlief/Reynolds). The motion with recommended wording change passed unanimously.
5. Merger AHEC and RHEP – Eastern Consortium – There was a motion to accept the recommendation as written (Foster/Hefner). The motion passed with Greenlief voting nay.
Other motions/recommendations – There was a motion to change the wording of the site coordinator positions in all recommendations that refer to the positions to match that of the motion in number 4 “to meet local needs” (Hefner/Raines). The motion passed unanimously.
Another outcome of the task force meetings are that we will be working to put a dollar value on the community service activities provided by students and others and supported by RHEP/AHEC funds. David Hughes has agreed to chair that committee. A graduate social work student will be providing some support to this work. We hope to have this information in the PERD report this year.
Hilda reported AHEC/RHEP staff met with the PERD staff in April about next years’ legislative audit. The PERD staff indicated they will be treating this year’s legislative audit as an update to last year’s report. A draft timeline for this report was discussed and staff assignments have been made.
With no further discussion there was a motion to adjourn the meeting (Greenlief/Ferrari). The motion passed unanimously.