WVRHEP Finance Working Subcommittee

March 19, 2001

Days Inn, 9:30 am

Attendees: David Hughes, Gaye Mitchell, Imogene Foster, Margaret Novacich, Malinda Turner, Chuck Conner, Bob Harman, Hilda R. Heady

Meeting began at 9:45 am. Margaret began the meeting by giving a report on the information Hilda had given her on the meeting with the Governor’s staff. The request for increased funding was received by the Governor’s office with respect and understanding. Several community members attended the meeting with Hilda and Dr. Weston.

The proposal to provide additional services from Doak, Cuppett & Poling is being processed by the Higher Education Policy Commission staff. We do not have a purchase order at this time and Margaret had not authorized DCP to begin the work. The Subcommittee members were displeased that work had not proceeded. They requested that Margaret authorize DCP to begin work. Mr. Harman and Mr. Hughes both agreed that the Lead Agencies should be able to guarantee payment to DCP until such time as the State Purchase Order is complete and in place. Margaret also informed the subcommittee that she is following previous years' calendar and has sent budget development tools to the Site Coordinators for return to her by May 1^st. She explained that she didn’t want to be left with nothing to work from as the fiscal year began and is working on the assumption that nothing will change until she hears otherwise.

Further discussion regarding the methods and the work to be performed as well as the timeline for the work followed. We are looking at a 3-4 week timeline. Local board approval may be the stumbling block because of the short time frame.

Ms. Heady arrived at this point in the discussion. She told the committee that the Governor’s office was very impressed. Regarding the process of development of formularies for budget allocations, Hilda stated that the local consortia boards must have input to the process. She suggests that the committee consider budgeting this FY as we have in previous years. If we discover we have been granted additional funding for this cycle, we would apply the formula to the additional funding. We would then apply the formula to the whole appropriation during the next fiscal year. The Legislature is giving RHEP a 3 year re appropriation instead of 5 years as in the previous two cycles. Mr. Harman stated that he agreed that we must go ahead with some form of budgeting process and support Hilda’s proposal.

The committee then discussed the budgeting problem areas that DCP are to tackle first. Committee members believe that DCP should look at the payments to field faculty and preceptors as a priority. DCP will be asked to look at the two extremes in the program, Cabin Creek Health Center Consortium and Eastern WVRHEC. We would like to see how using the EWVRHEC model would affect all the consortia.

Committee members then began review of the Doak, Cuppett & Poling Program Review document.

Recommendation #1: The committee members accept this recommendation and expect that the logical central location for the allocations would be the HEPC Office. Margaret stated that she is unable to endorse this. At this time, if a consortium does not receive a check on time, nor has a problem with their funding, they have easy access to a representative at their respective school. This representative understands the importance and sometimes desperation of these situations and will go above and beyond to make sure the problem is solved as quickly as possible. She does not feel comfortable that this will occur at the HEPC level. Most of the staff does not have knowledge or experience with the RHEP Program. It may not be given the priority that is has experienced up to now.

Recommendation #2: The Finance Committee and Advisory Panel need to become more involved. After discussion the committee determined that the condensation of accepted line items has begun the process and development of the formularies will complete this process.

Recommendation #3: Covered above.

Recommendation #4: The committee discussed the need for a list to be developed by DCP of material that should be included in the RHEP audit. This list may include schedules developed to answer the specific questions that have arisen. The audits and financial statements would then be reviewed by the Finance Committee membership.

Recommendations #5 & #6 will be referred to the Recruitment and Retention Committee.

Hilda had to leave to attend her next scheduled meeting.

Recommendations #7-#12 will be dealt with during the development of the audit policies.

Recommendation #8: Language was developed a few years ago to deal with a situation that arose between the Program and a Lead Agency. The problem resolved itself and the language development never proceeded any further. Margaret will send that language to committee members for consideration during policy and procedure development.

Recommendation #13: The working subcommittee will draft a recommendation to the Advisory Panel that a working committee be developed to investigate additional funding sources through government grants and private agencies to increase dollars flowing in the program.

Recommendation #14: It was discussed by the committee that “if it ain’t broke don’t fix it” There will be no further discussion of this recommendation at this time.

The committee concluded the meeting with a task list:

1. Margaret is to meet with Bob Whitler to discuss methodology.

2. Margaret is to contact Mr. Whitler regarding his ability to attend the next meeting.

3. Doak, Cuppett & Poling will be asked to include a list of items that need to be addressed in future Lead Agency audits. This list will be included in a redraft of the audit policy 93-01.

The committee members in attendance selected April 16^th at 10:00 am as the next meeting date. It will be held in the Braxton Co LRC to reduce costs.