ST. CLAIRSVILLE — The COVID-19 pandemic meant significant changes for the Belmont County Health Department as it monitored cases and administered vaccinations.

New faces also appeared on staff as employees left and new hirings commenced. Now the board of health is restructuring and adjusting as the emergency ends.

On Tuesday the board went into a closed-door session for about an hour to discuss appointment, employment, dismissal, discipline or compensation of public employees. When the board returned to open session, members voted to authorize Deputy Commissioner Robert Sproul to explore a new firm to provide human resources services.

After the meeting, Sproul said the health department currently contracts with Clemans Nelson & Associates, a labor relations firm, to provide human resources help.

“We are working with the staff to reevaluate everything in the building,” Sproul said, adding that recent changes including hiring Belmont County Health Commissioner Tamara Hess as a full-time director and creating the position of medical director to provide a medical license for the department to operate under; previously, the department operated under a combined medical director and health commissioner.

“We’re considering other options for HR for the office, because that was one of the discussions that came up with staff discussions. They mentioned it would be nice to have an HR person on board,” he said.

Sproul said availability will be the top criteria he will keep in mind when looking for a new human resources provider.

“Post-COVID, with everything that happened with COVID over the years, we’ve got new staff and we’ve got to try and get everything acclimated back up again, in addition to accreditation. We have a lot of staff who are not familiar with accreditation, a lot of personnel issues we’re working on,” he said.

At least 20 new staff members have been hired in the past few years.

“We have a lot of brand-new people, so now we have to transition from how we operated during COVID to back again. We’re going back to 2019, before COVID, so how does our operation look?” he said. “There’s no COVID grant money, so we have to look at our funding. So basically if this person’s job was 20 percent COVID, well COVID’s gone now, so they have to be transitioned into another” role.

Sproul said the health department also will not be able to purchase as many items, but also likely will not need so much material.

Sproul added that the public should not notice any change in the health department’s services and operations.

He said health departments are quasi-government agencies, not entirely considered part of the government but not private businesses either, and the Belmont County Health Department does not utilize the county’s human resources office.

“We don’t have an HR person in our building,” he said. “They really don’t cover us.”

The board then went into a second closed-door session to discuss compensation of a public employee. Sproul said the two sessions were not related. He said a sanitary field worker was leaving for another job and requested the final week of employment as time off. He said the board made an exception because the employee had given a month’s notice, leaving sufficient time to prepare for an incoming person.

“That was an extenuating circumstance,” he said.

In other matters, Hess reported COVID-19 numbers have dropped, with 60-70 known cases in the county as of Tuesday.

After the meeting, Sproul said he did not have the numbers of prior COVID-19 cases at hand for comparison and added these are cases where someone has been hospitalized or have been tested for other reasons and COVID-19 was discovered. Home testing results do not have to be reported.

Sproul reminds the public that the winter months are fast approaching and more people are expected to be in close quarters with higher chances of infection of influenza and other respiratory diseases.

The health department is no longer providing COVID-19 vaccines, but other vaccinations are being scheduled in the school districts, with Martins Ferry City School District today, Bridgeport Exempted Village School District on Thursday, Union Local School District on Oct. 24 and Bellaire Local Schools on Oct. 25.

More information about vaccine availability can be found at the health department’s website, belmontcountyhealth.com, or the Ohio Department of Health at odh.ohio.gov.