Lawmakers hear updates on West Virginia DHHR transition

Young was appointed by Gov. Jim Justice at the beginning of July to serve as interim DHHR secretary through the end of the year.

“We’ve been on the job for just over a month now with a lot of work to do,” Young said Monday. “We’ve been working on the shared administration piece and starting to work out our individual budgets.”

The Legislature passed House Bill 2006 during this year’s regular session; the bill will split the DHHR into three new agencies as of Jan. 1, 2024.

The West Virginia Department of Health will include the Bureau for Public Health, Office of Emergency Medical Services, Office of the Chief Medical Examiner, Center for Threat Preparedness, Health Care Authority, Office of Inspector General and Human Rights Commission.

The West Virginia Department of Human Services will include the Bureau for Behavioral Health, Bureau for Child Support Enforcement, Bureau for Family Assistance, Bureau for Medical Services, Bureau for Social Services and Office of Drug Control Policy.

The West Virginia Department of Health Facilities will include Hopemont Hospital, Jackie Withrow Hospital, John Manchin Sr. Health Care Center, Lakin Hospital, Mildred Mitchell-Bateman Hospital, Welch Community Hospital and William R. Sharpe, Jr. Hospital.

“Transparency” is one of the overarching goals of the transition process, Young said.

“So we do invite anyone who would like to see the operations or see anything within our operations to come and see what we’re doing between the different departments — in the Department of Health, the Department of Facilities and the Department of Human Resources,” she said.

Young highlighted staffing shortages within the Office of the Chief Medical Examiner, staying the state needs to employ around a dozen medical examiners to handle the current caseload.

“We have three — 3 1/2 maybe,” she said. “This is a discussion that we can have with our medical schools and our residencies to see if we can help fulfill that need moving forward.”

The three administrators are working “very closely together” to develop the new Office of Shared Administration, Persily said.

“We’re really looking at how we can streamline the services that we provide,” she said. “So we’re looking at restructuring some of the services that we provide so that we can be the most efficient and effective as we break into the three departments with an office of shared administration,” she said.

One of his initial goals is put together financial statements for each of the state-owned health care facilities in the state, Caruso said.

“We’re going to try and categorize those in a position where we can actually evaluate the performance of each facility,” he said.

Welch Community Hospital in McDowell County is slated to be the next addition to the roaster of state-owned health care facilities, Caruso said.

“We’re in the process of converting and integrating that into the West Virginia medical system,” he said. “That should be complete sometime in the month of March in 2024.”