Restaurant workers in Kanawha and Putnam counties would have to get food-handler cards under a proposal put up for public comment by the Kanawha-Charleston Board of Health on Thursday. The move could generate up to $100,000 in yearly revenue for the agency.
According to Lolita Kirk, administrator for the Kanawha-Charleston Health Department, the agency's budget for next fiscal year includes roughly half a million dollars in cutbacks. The KCHD, like other local health departments in West Virginia, faced a potential 25 percent cut in state funds, a loss from threat preparedness grants and uncertainty surrounding reimbursement from Medicaid, Kirk said.
The health department likely won't fill any job openings it has now or in the coming year as a result, with the exception of sanitarians, she said.
"We're going to have to be very careful with what we purchase and watch our overtime - all the things you do when your budget is slim," Kirk said. "Also, increasing some fees to help offset the cuts from the state."
The health department will move forward with a plan to bill Medicaid for HIV and STD testing at the same rates that private providers do, but Kirk said the health department is unlikely to receive the levels of reimbursement it requests from Medicaid. The move to require food-handler cards, which Kanawha County has never required and Putnam County has not required for several years, would generate new revenue without relying on state money.
"There's very little time and effort needed from sanitarians to do this," said Stan Mills, the KCHD's director of environmental health services. "It's well worth it; it's teaching that basic food handler about hand washing and temperatures and things like that that some of them really don't understand."
Dr. Michael Brumage, the health officer for the KCHD, also told board members Thursday that the agency's harm-reduction program has been growing steadily, and its needle exchange saw 75 patients on Wednesday. The program has also successfully referred 15 patients to treatment programs since its launch, Brumage said.
"We don't know what that recidivism rate is going to look like, but we think that's a positive step and that's a good number considering we've only been doing this for the past six months or so," he said.
Brumage said the health department has also placed a police officer on site during the harm reduction clinics to ensure that no illicit drug use or drug dealing occurs on health department property, but said the police presence hasn't discouraged patients from coming.
"Patients even like that they're here; they understand that it is a valuable program for them, and they don't want it jeopardized by [drug dealing]," Brumage said.
Reach Lydia Nuzum at
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