Everyone's Opinion Newsletter

I strongly disagree that I have turned my back on the elderly by bringing Affinity Health Services in to manage the County's skilled nursing facility, Valley View Home. The home has been a significant drain on the county's financial situation over the past several years. Instead of just planning to get rid of the home, I felt we should bring in a professional management team that has a proven track record in many other County and private facilities. We interviewed all five of the firms that provide this service to County homes and determined, after the interviews, reviewing presentation materials and checking references, that Affinity would best serve us in Blair County. They have greatly assisted other homes in achieving financial self-sustainability and I believe they will be able to do the same for Valley View. While the finances are certainly important, since it's taxpayer dollars needed to run the home, we have also made it very clear to Affinity that quality of service to those who call Valley View Home their home is also essential. It is our intent to improve services while cutting costs by operating more efficiently and effectively.

There are changes being made at the home to cut back significantly on using outside nursing resources and to cut back on overtime. Both of these are very costly to the County and shouldn't be necessary if we are properly staffed and scheduled. Changes such as those necessary are often difficult; perhaps this is what Sharon is referring to when she says "huge staffing issues." The residents will be better served by having our own regular staff available at meal times and other times which was difficult with the schedule and staffing patterns instituted by previous administrators.

I don't know just what budget Sharon is referring to as "false" and "doesn't include operating expenses." The County budget that we adopted last year shows almost all of the expenses for Valley View in that portion of the budget, but there are some items, such as Workers Compensation (we're self-insured for this), Unemployment Compensation and payment on bonds that are integrated into those line items in the General Fund budget. To understand what the true operating expenses are for Valley View, Affinity has converted our cash basis budget to an accrual basis budget, so it is compatible with the recommendations of our auditors and we have better information with which to make decisions. This revised budget also extracts Valley View's share from the County budget in those areas to be able to show all of the true costs of running the home within their budget. Perhaps this is what Sharon is calling "operating expenses." Her comments were rather accusatory in tone and not very specific or clear, so I'm trying to interpret to what she may be referring. If she, or anyone else has any further concerns or questions, I'll do my best to answer them.

I would sure like to agree with Sharon that I would encourage more people to attend our weekly meetings. I had discussed this with Jeff Neff when we did the interview on Prevention and he has started putting Commissioner meetings on the published schedule. As Sharon said, we meet at 10am on Tuesdays and we alternate weeks between Work Sessions and Business Sessions. The work sessions are where we hear presentations from elected officials, department heads and others who bring items for action by the Commissioners. This is when we have the opportunity to ask questions, seek further information and get input from those present. Our business meetings are generally more perfunctory since the items we're voting on have already been discussed at the work session. The meeting on September 16 will be a Business Session, the following week will be a Work Session and they continue to alternate each week thereafter.

Thank you for the opportunity to share more information about County government,

Donna Gority

Blair County Commissioner

What do you think?