Chuck Conner, Site Coordinator Winding Roads and Tom Whittier, Community Member Winding Roads sent comments to the meeting via e-mail.  They are included.  A phone call was placed to Tommy Mullins, CEO Boone Memorial Hospital.  Due to the poor set-up by Lakeview, Mr. Mullins was not able to participate fully.  We were to add Dr. Weston and William Duty, Community Member Southern Counties to the conference call, but Lakeview did not have the capabilities to place this call.

The meeting began with Hilda giving the committee a Legislative update.  A favorable report was received from the Performance, Evaluation, and Research Division to the Joint Committee on Government Operations.  One negative finding was the RHEP Advisory Panel is not well positioned to evaluate our program.  We have struggled in the past with this and the RHEP Finance Committee had approved funds to be used to initiate a long-term evaluation of RHEP.  The Finance Committee also approved funding for a fiscal review of the program to be conducted by Doak, Cuppett and Poling.  This review is currently underway.  The PERD auditor praised the TRACKER system and our Information Technology efforts.  They stated that our web site was the best they had seen in the state.  A potential problem area is that there is no funding for these projects.  The Joint Committee recommended a funding line be established to manage and upgrade both.

The Joint Committee approved the recommendations from PERD report and sent it directly to the Legislative Finance Committee.  These developments change our original charge somewhat and definitely affect our timeline.  Hilda has been told it would be prudent to discuss these matters with the counsel for the Joint Committee prior to the election.  This may also be the best time to discuss any possible language changes in the original legislation.

The sites have sent budgets dealing with functional areas to Margaret.  Jodie Jackson, Mike McCarthy and Helen Baker have been asked to build an evaluation budget and Mike McCarthy and Mark Allen are looking at future Information Technology needs.  Margaret is coordinating all these requests into spreadsheets for the committee to work from.

The Higher Education Policy Commission has requested a $500,000 increase in the upcoming budget sessions. Any funding increase above that amount will need to be requested by the program and the communities.

The sub-committee then discussed the areas that need to be looked at.  These include but are not limited to:

1. Standardization of some budget figures.
2. Site Coordinator and Support salaries and fringe rates.
3. Field Faculty receiving payment vs. those that are not, and how payments are being determined.
4. Housing costs are either fixed or variable based on the location of the consortia.

At this time Dan Durbin suggested that one possible solution to the housing finance issue could be the issuance of a bond from the HEPC level.  He will make contact on the University System level and gather information about this idea.

The sub-committee then developed a list of material that they would need to review prior to the next meeting in order to be prepared to work.  This material will be gathered by Margaret and mailed to committee next week.

1. Current budgets for all sites.
2. The number of counties served and the number of students served.
3. RHEP administrative support
4. RHEP Visions Committee recommendations
5. Community Health Contacts
6. RHI/RHEP Legislation
7. Analysis or Special Projects expenditures over the life of the program.

The next committee meeting will be held on November 13, 2000 at the Days Inn, Flatwoods.  The meeting will begin at 11:00 am and should end at 2:00 pm.  A working lunch will be provided.  Margaret Novacich will facilitate the sub-committee.
 
 
 
  From <@WVNVM.WVNET.EDU:avestal@wvrhep.org> Fri Mar 2 09:10:34 2001 Return-Path: <<@WVNVM.WVNET.EDU:avestal@wvrhep.org>> Received: from WVNVM.WVNET.EDU (wvnvm.wvnet.edu [129.71.2.4]) by medix.marshall.edu (8.9.3/8.9.3) with SMTP id JAA22094 for ; Fri, 2 Mar 2001 09:10:33 -0500 Received: from 990565 [129.71.184.232] by WVNVM.WVNET.EDU (IBM VM SMTP Level 310) via TCP with SMTP ; Fri, 02 Mar 2001 08:23:34 EST Message-Id: <4.2.0.58.20010302082310.00956bb0@mail.marshall.edu> X-Sender: avestal@mail.marshall.edu X-Mailer: QUALCOMM Windows Eudora Pro Version 4.2.0.58 Date: Fri, 02 Mar 2001 08:23:58 -0500 To: finance@medix.marshall.edu From: April Vestal Subject: 2000-11-13.htm Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii"; format=flowed

Hilda began the meeting with a Legislative update for those who were unable to attend the first meeting.  We will have an update from Doak, Cuppett and Poling on the program review at the November 27th meeting.

The committee spent time discussing the problems and option for budget development that face the program.  They also discussed the possibility of putting all the funds back into the "pot" and developing a funding formula based on fixed costs and variable costs.  There appears to be much interest among the sub-committee members in this plan.

The committee members asked Hilda for a funding history of the RHEP Program.  It is as follows:

Program begins in 1991.  The Legislation is funded at $6 million dollars.  The funding is divided with $2 million to restore funding to Higher Education; $2 million will be marked at the School level for Primary Health Care and the remaining $2 million will be allocated to the communities through the schools.  Then in 1996 the funding increased by $1.5 million; with $1 million going to the communities and $500,000 used to make up lost Kellogg funding at the schools.  This makes the current amounts $4.5 million to the schools and $3 million to the sites.

The sub-Committee then developed the following next steps:

1. The need to develop a final budget request to the Legislature.
2. The need to decide on a process to allocate funding.  Identify variable and fixed expenses by means of the actual expenses for the last four years.  Develop student ratio by the number of students over 4-year period in TRACKER and divide by 2.8 million
3. Evaluate processes for policy recommendations.

There was some discussion of developing a student training expense contingency fund to hold unexpended funds in an escrow account for student training.  This would eliminate the build up of carryover in the communities.

Any plan we follow is going to require buy in from the consortia and communities.  It will be the responsibility of the sub-committee and the Finance Committee to assist in securing the buy in.

Margaret will report back at the next meeting as to whether the sites took into consideration the HEPC $500,000 request in their "wish lists".  The "wish list" budgets along with the budgets to implement the PERD report recommendation total $2 million.  This needs to be reduced.