With new county board, potential health department governance changes in question

CHARLOTTE, N.C. — The lame duck Mecklenburg County Board of Commissioners will not explore potential governance changes of the Mecklenburg County Health Department in its final weeks.

In May, county commissioners voted 6-2 to form an ad hoc committee to explore potential changes. The committee never met.

[Meck County Health Department considering public health board]

Vice Chair Jim Puckett said the committee never met due to the county manager’s leave of absence following her husband’s death.

“I chose not to call the ad hoc committee to meet in light of Dena’s loss and then following that time, she needed to adjust and recover and then sometime after, she came back to get caught up,” Puckett told his colleagues in an email obtained by Channel 9.

“While we had every right to meet without her, I felt it important that she be available for advice and to comment on any changes we might consider. Alas, time ran out,” Puckett said.

The committee was formed in response to a slew of health department scandals.

In early 2017, the county failed to tell 185 women about abnormal pap smear results.

[Audit of Mecklenburg Co. Health Dept. recommends changes]

Later that year, leaders inadvertently provided Channel 9 private medical information of hundreds of patients.

In April, a health technician spoke out after he said he was fired from his job in the department for being a whistleblower.

[Hepatitis A outbreak at SouthPark restaurant]

Currently, the county is in the middle of a hepatitis A outbreak with high profile potential exposures at Village Tavern in SouthPark and this past summer at a Hardee’s in west Charlotte.

[HEPATITIS A outbreak at Hardee's]

County Manager Dena Diorio oversees the health department and Health Director Gibbie Harris.

The potential changes to the agency’s governance commissioners were exploring included an advisory board, privatizing the department and a separate board of health.

Mecklenburg County is the only county in North Carolina that operates its health department without independent medical oversight, according to Puckett.

Puckett, and the board’s other two Republicans Bill James and Matthew Ridenhour lost their bid for re-election.

It’s unclear whether the new board of commissioners will push for governance changes. A spokesperson for the county declined to say whether the new board of commissioners is obligated to have the committee meeting.

“There are many cracks in the process and I feel a serious, some might say dangerous, lack of qualified oversight of this very important county service,” Puckett wrote to his colleagues.

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