After brief union, Health and Human Services become 2 agencies

After less than two years together, the brief marriage of the state's Health and Human Services agencies is over.

Gov. Mike Beebe and the heads of the again-separate departments say they don't believe the more than 1 million Arkansans served by the agencies will notice any major differences after the split, which took effect with the start of the new fiscal year on Sunday, July 1.

Beebe signed an order in May to split up the Department of Health and Human Services into two separate departments, undoing a merger enacted under former Gov. Mike Huckabee that was meant to improve accountability in the Health Department. After Beebe and lawmakers questioned whether the merger was still working, the Legislature approved a measure that gave the governor authority to split up the agencies.

Beebe said last week the agencies appeared on track for the split to occur, and said he would measure its success by looking at several factors.

"The first is ... the delivery of services by the Health Department, both pre and post de-merger? Are we doing as good or better a job in making sure we're delivering services to our citizens?" Beebe told reporters last week.

Beebe said he also would look at whether the agencies are able to operate on their own without affecting the balanced budget, and keep a close eye on worker morale.

"That was a big issue, and Health Department morale was at a fairly low ebb according to all the feedback I'd gotten," Beebe said. "So what is this doing for morale?"

John Selig, now the director of the Department of Human Services, said the de-merger of the agencies will be successful if citizens don't notice any change in services.

"We want it to be transparent to the clients," Selig said. "They shouldn't see any difference in the way they get services, and hopefully they'll get even better services from Public Health, and Public Health is headed that way."

By the end of May, Selig told Beebe in a memo that the breakup of the agencies was about 80 percent completed but said that the Health Department's payroll operations would remain in Department of Human Services until after the first payroll period of the month. Selig said the department decided to delay that move to avoid any payroll delays or problems due to a move.

Pre-de-merger, Human Services had about 7,200 employees and Health had more than 2,700 employees, according to the Arkansas Department of Finance and Administration. Of the combined department's total $4.7 billion budget, about $340 million was set aside for the health division.

The Legislature enacted Huckabee's plan to merge the two departments in 2005 when the governor said it would make for a smoother operation.

When preparing for the merger, DHS officials complained in e-mails and memos about the Health Department being poorly run. The documents showed they found at the Health Department a lack of central management, lack of standards and training, and budgeting performed at too low a level to be effective, among other things.

In August 2006, officials from the new department told a legislative committee that combining the agencies saved the state $3.5 million in the first year of the merger.

Paul Halverson, who headed the health division and now is director of the Health Department, said the department benefited administratively from the merger. But Halverson said health policy benefits by having his department as a cabinet-level agency.

"I don't anticipate that it's going to be an on-again, off-again thing. That's very disruptive for the organization and I don't think anyone wants that," Halverson said. "I hope that we'll go another 100 years and be a strong health department as a cabinet-level agency."
source:/www.pbcommercial.com