West Virginia Rural Health Education Partnerships/Area Health Education Centers

WVRHEP Finance Committee
November 15, 1999
Days Inn, Flatwoods, WV
Draft

Voting Members in Attendance:  Chuck Conner, Jim Welshonce, Bill Shires.
Staff Members in  Attendance:  Margaret Novacich, W. Donald Weston, MD, Hilda R. Heady, April Vestal.
Others Attending:  Carla Campbell, Malinda Turner, Gaye Mitchell, Tom Whittier
Absent:  Sarah Lee Neal, David Hughes

Special Projects Requests:
        Funding request was submitted by Rivers & Bridges consortium to send a team of four members to the Institute for Health Care Improvements 11th Annual Conference on Quality Improvement in Health Care in New Orleans on December 8th - 10th, 1999.  After discussion by the committee a motion was made by Chuck Conner to fund one person to attend this conference.  Jim Welshonce made the second.  The motion carried with a request from Dr. Weston that the attendee comes to the next Finance Committee meeting to report on the conference.

RFPs for Program Reviews of Sites.
        Margaret circulated the proposals from Suttle & Stalnaker and Doak, Cuppett & Poling to perform the fiscal reviews of the RHEP funds at the 13 Lead Agencies.  There is a wide variance in the amounts of the proposals.  Hilda and Margaret will contact the two firms that have responded to clarify the RFPs.  They will then speak to the Finance Committee via conference call to determine how to proceed.  The conference call will be scheduled for after the Thanksgiving holiday.  Margaret clarified that the committee would need to accept the lowest bid that meets our specifications. 

Request to the Governor for and increase in allocation. 
        Dr. Weston has sent a request to the Governor's Budget for an increase in allocation to RHEP of $500,000.  Dr. Weston submitted this request without approval from the committee in order to meet the deadline.  The committee indicated that this request was in the best interest of the program and should be allowed to stand as submitted.

        The request is detailed as follows:  $300,000 for salary adjustments to the sites.  This is funding that the other state budgets received under SB 547, which increased salaries by 3.25% each of the previous four years.  The increase also includes $150,000 to cover completed program expansion that has been absorbed by the consortia, and $50,000 for Community, Staff and Faculty development.   

        Dr. Weston expects the Finance Committee to make recommendations of disbursements within the categories to the consortia. 

Reports from 3 Schools on RHEP Funds
        Dr Weston delivered the reports of RHEP fund allocation and spending as requested by the Advisory Panel from the September meeting.  These reports are attached to the minutes (not on the web) and will be made available to anyone who wishes a copy.  This information is a matter of public record as stated by Dr. Weston. 
        Tom then requested that the committee may want to look at how much the schools are contributing from school based funding to the RHEP program and how many of the positions shown on the reports are new positions compared to the number of existing positions funded by the RHEP dollars.  Bill Shires put forth the motion.  Chuck Conner seconded and the motion carried.  Dr. Weston will solicit the information from the schools and report this information at the March meeting.

The meeting was adjourned at 1:45 with no further business to conduct.


Next meeting:  March 20th, 2000 at 12:30 p.m.