WVRHEP Finance Committee Minutes

March 15, 2004

12:30 am – 2:30 pm

Rooms 114-120

Days Inn, Flatwoods, WV

Attendees:

Voting Members in Attendance: .Bobby Brown, Parr Thacker, Steve Smith, Connie Simmons, Malinda Turner, Gaye Mitchell, Ralph Utzman.

Other Interested Parties Attending: Margaret Novacich, Hilda Heady, April Vestal, Carla Campbell, Sonnie Strader, Dennis McCutcheon, Chuck Conner, Robert Blake Loretta , Dalena Riggs, Kathryn Greenlief, Martha Cook

The meeting was called to order and introductions were made around the table.

The chair called for a motion to accept the minutes of the November meeting as presented. A motion was made by Ralph Utzman, with the second by Parr Thacker. There being no questions or discussion the minutes were approved by voice vote.

Next the chair called for a motion to accept the quarterly budget reports as submitted. Prior to the motion Carla Campbell of Southern Counties expressed concerns regarding their line items. There is a difference between the line items RHEP uses and those that MURC uses. Community Service is not being reported accurately. Margaret volunteered to contact MURC regarding line item reporting. Malinda Turner then clarified that she has the same occurrence with her lead agency. She gets the report from the accounting department, makes the changes to more accurately reflect actual RHEP line items and then submits the report to Margaret. It is decided that Carla will give this a try for the next quarter. Chuck Conner stated that Winding Roads will pay certain services at the end of the year, so fund balance is not reflective of unspent amounts.

The chair entertained the motion to accept reports. The motion was made by Malinda Turner, seconded by Gaye Mitchell and approved voice vote.

Hilda began with an update of the status of the Legislative session which is still in flux. The Legislature has gone into extended session to work on the Budget Bill. There were last minute changes to the reauthorization. Upon completion and deliverance of the PERD report to Government Org, it was recommended that RHEP receive a 4 year reauthorization. The Senate struck the reauthorization down to one year. We tried to work with House conferees to change the reauthorization back to four years on Thursday, March 1,, 2004 but the bill passed at one year. We have no explanation for this change and it will be discussed at the Advisory Panel meeting. It took administration seven and one-half months to respond to the information requests from PERD during the last review period. We have already contacted Brian Armentrout at PERD and meeting has been set to determine data needs and get this report done as soon as possible. It is frustrating to not know what the message is and what this means. Hilda would like the consortia members to discuss this issue with their local legislative members to find out if they know. We do not assume it was intentional; the change could have fallen through the cracks.

Bobby had concerns about the term “limited effectiveness”. Hilda stated that the term “moderate effectiveness” was used in the final PERD report. The change was due to the difference between the PERD survey and the RH survey. Bobby has been told that the term “limited effectiveness” was the reason for the “limited reauthorization”.

Budget concerns from the Senate bill are the bill is different from the Governors recommendations of 2.5%. We appear to have a 7.5 to 8% reduction. Senator Plymale asked Hilda to submit 10%-15%-20% reductions. He changed his mind the following week. We are now back to our first assumption. Bond funds could possibly be used to restore the cuts. We don’t anticipate any of the restoration funds to come to community money. Hilda is suggesting that the chair consider motion to freeze fund balances that are not already encumbered.

Bobby calls for motion to freeze fund balances until further notice with exceptions for encumbered funds. Bobby asked that no one go out and encumber PO hurriedly to circumvent the freeze. The motion was made by Gaye Mitchell and seconded by Steve Smith. Discussion followed. Some sites have put a sizeable amount in GME that they are not sure they can reasonable spend on GME this fiscal year. The motion passed by voice vote.

The chair told the committee members and other interested attendees that he had contacted Senator Plymale’s office asking him to attend today’s meeting. He also contacted the Chancellor asking him to contact the Senator regarding his attendance at an RHEP meeting. Due to the extended Legislative session, the Senator was unable to attend today’s meeting. Chancellor Mullen was unable to attend due to the Legislature’s work on the Budget Bill.

It is the consensus of the Administration and the chair that we have 90 days to restructure the program and make our one year reauthorization. We can set strategies to achieve goals specific to counties. An example of this might be a site decides to recruit a Family Medicine practitioner by 2008. This is a goal that can be achieved with specific steps.

We also need to look at possible consolidation of consortia. It has been discussed before. Let us consider if there are mergers that make sense. The average cost per student week was $585. This needs to be evened out over the consortia. The question was raised that changing our focus could raise the average cost. We need to focus on areas that have traditionally been forgotten.

These 15 counties do not have any WV Medical Graduate physician recruits: Tyler, Pleasants, Doddridge, Ritchie, Wood, Wirt, Gilmer, Tucker, Grant, Morgan, Clay, Mingo, Wyoming, Summers, and Ohio. The very successful counties are as follows: Berkeley, Randolph, Greenbrier, Fayette, Raleigh, Kanawha, Wayne, and Logan. Other counties have experienced moderate success.

A target figure would be $650 per student week. It was stated that students are already in process. Schools are sending students based on previous rotations. We must look at costs savings as the focus.

The committee then discussed formation of ad hoc committee meeting every two weeks until May 17^th to restructure the program. Hilda will purpose this at the Ad Panel.

The meeting adjourned at 2:15