Trending
MORGANTOWN - When it comes to the recruitment and retention of healthcare professionals, the Monongalia County Health Department is caught between a rock and a hard place.
Their names are WVU Medicine and Vandalia Health.
The two largest healthcare systems in West Virginia also happen to be the health department's neighbors.
Earlier this week, the Monongalia County Board of Health voted unanimously in favor of an ambitious move that it hopes will allow the health department to be more competitive in one of the state's most challenging markets.
MCHD leadership is preparing to end the department’s affiliation with the West Virginia Division of Personnel on Dec. 31.
According to the DOP's website, its mission is "to provide personnel management programs to support state agencies in employing and retaining individuals of the highest ability and integrity to provide efficient and effective governmental services."
Think of it as a kind of central human resources entity covering state agencies and affiliated local health departments.
While the centralized service can be a benefit for departments without the administrative capabilities to handle the oversight in-house, the one-size-fits-all nature can also be a detriment.
MCHD Chief Financial Officer Devan Smith explained the reasoning behind the move.
"I think there were a couple really important factors. It was really challenging for us to recruit and retain employees. We were finding that our employees were getting poached by other organizations. We're in a healthcare space, directly next to a bunch of healthcare providers, and they're simply able to offer a more competitive salary," Smith said. "Under DOP, we don't have a lot of control over the compensation package that we're able to offer. DOP sets job descriptions, and the job descriptions don't necessarily reflect the work that we do here at this health department. There are several key positions here that have no job description within the DOP system. So, we have people with job descriptions that don't fit actual expectations. They set pay bands, and those don't include any sort of adjustments for the Morgantown locality, which is one of the most expensive labor markets in the entire state. We have salary bands that don't reflect actual market conditions in the place that we operate."
Smith recalled an instance in which the health department had the money and a qualified candidate to create a new grant-funded position but had to pass on the opportunity because the job description attached by the DOP didn't allow for an appropriate salary.
"There are so many circumstances where we're managing our operations and we hit these barriers from this external organization that's interfering and telling us we can't do that," Smith said.
But moving away from DOP means more than just being able to set your own job descriptions and compensation rates. It also means the health department must adopt its own policies on a lengthy list of topics ranging from codes of conduct to HIPAA/ADA compliance, to layoff procedures.
MCHD leadership have spent months on the effort. Smith worked through some of the high-priority items with the board of health during its Thursday meeting.
As an example, he worked through the department's guiding principles in determining compensation.
"We've developed a methodology to take different wage and labor statistic market points to come up with a calculation that we think pegs the market for us," he said. "It's a combination of the Morgantown locality for occupation classifications, national healthcare and national government. So, we're taking into account locality, but also the healthcare and government sectors. We do an across-the-board downshift in market rates for our organization because we do have very favorable benefits and very favorable working hours and leave policies. And then there's room for individual position-by-position adjustments."
Smith conceded that the process has been arduous, but ultimately in the best interest of the health department.
"Our perspective is that the DOP should be a service provider to us; that we are receiving value from our relationship with the DOP. And we evaluated that relationship and determined that actually, in most cases, they were a barrier to helping us achieve what we wanted to do. And so, we decided that we would go through the process, though painful, of doing it ourselves."