The merged health department kicked off with a reception on February 1st attended by local elected officials and others. Director of the Ohio Department of Health, Dr. Alvin Jackson, attended and gave short speech citing the benefits of the merger and congratulating those who worked to make it happen.
In the first two weeks of the combined department, we are working to integrate staff. We’ve moved the birth and death records from both departments together and moved some clerical staff to the front office. We’ve begun moving the environmental health staff one area.
The computer networks have been joined and most of the city data has been migrated over.
The cleaning contact for the agency that the county commissioners had cleaning the rest of the building had to be amended to have them clean the back wing. They started cleaning that area on the 15th.
Weekly divisional staff meetings have started for Environmental Health, Clerical, and Nursing.
I am still learning more about how the city’s programs were run, and what the staff does. Daily logs, which the county nurses and sanitarians have used for years, will be new to the former city workers. These logs allow us to get a clear picture of what the employees spend their time doing, and make it possible for us to make better decisions about service delivery and will allow us to do accurate cost analysis for our programs.
