ST. CLAIRSVILLE — The Belmont County Board of Health welcomed some staff members on Monday.

Health Director Tamara Hess introduced four new hires.

They are Jessica Puglisi, vital statistics; Emma Aston, registered nurse with a bachelor of science and nursing, in charge of the vaccination program; Sutherlynd Butler, the new fiscal officer; and Brittni Cavicchia, medical secretary.

Since March, the health department has been working with Belmont County Auditor Cindi Henry’s office to handle the department’s financial needs following the resignation of the department’s fiscal officer.

In prior meetings, Hess noted one problem is that all the incoming health department funding has gone into a single account, and the state has requested the department list every month separately, back to 2020. This includes keeping track of the ongoing status of grants.

Butler, who graduated in 2022 from the University of Akron, has a background in working with local accounting and payroll.

“I just got hired last week, so I’m still in the learning process. There’s a lot to learn, and I just hope to make the office more cohesive,” she said. “I’m just still learning the position, so I need to get in a little more and see what’s happening in the office.”

Deputy Health Commissioner Robert Sproul said three candidates were interviewed and Butler was the top contender.

“We will still be interacting with the county auditor to provide additional training for our person and providing guidance,” he said in a text after the meeting.

Sproul added that the health department has purchased the QuickBooks software program to be installed in the health department office.

In other matters, Aston delivered a proposal for joining the Local Public Health Services Collaborative, which offers assistance to its member health departments.

“A good handful of local health departments are a part of it and utilizing it’s services,” she said. “It’s been around for a couple of years actually, but we just now heard of it and we want to utilize it.”

Ashton said some services include provider credentialing.

“They do all of the credentialing and will offer insurance billing by the collaborative. They will negotiate all of our contracts,” she said. “They also are in contact with a lot more insurance companies than what we have so far.”

She said they would negotiate for prices on practice management solutions, as well as medications and vaccinations.

“We do lots of vaccinations at the health department, so with the collaborative we get group vaccine pricing, which allows our upfront cost for vaccines to decrease,” she said. “They also help with billing. That’s a big aspect of this. Not that we have a problem billing, but we spend a lot of time.”

She said the collaborative will also follow up on insurance claims and issues of incorrect billing. They will also negotiate pricing for health records. Ashton said the department would be able to use patient check-in kiosks to help streamline the process.

“We want to increase patient satisfactions and offerings obviously. We also want the health care staff to devote more time to actual medical services and preparations versus the technical support and billing issue side,” Ashton said.

She said the collaborative’s billing experts can take over rejected or unpaid claims and ultimately increase the financial reimbursements to the health department.

“Our proposal is to integrate services rendered by the local public health services collaborative into both reproductive health and immunization departments,” she said.

She said currently the biller costs $48,879.60, e-clinical work is $7,671.60.

“Our expenses for this year would be $56,551.20. If we were to integrate with the collaborative and use it’s services, the grand total for the entire year would be $52,936.36,” she said, adding this includes the onboarding fee and medical record integration fee. “Every year after our first year of being part of the collaborative, it will only be $44,436.37 to implement.”

Ashton said the collaborative takes a 7 percent remittance fee monthly.