DEPARTMENT OF HEALTH

    The 1998-99 budget provides the Department of Health with one completely new program. This initiative tries to promote independence for persons with disabilities, with a line item worth $100,000, and will be used to fund hot-lines. It will provide guidance to various programs that exist for people with certain disabilities.

    State Health Care Centers are still very much part of this year=s budget despite the Governor=s attempt to privatize these facilities. According to Act 87 of 1996, the department selected three pilot centers as test sites to determine what direction these centers should take. In December, the Secretary of Health, after having reviewed the study that was performed in part by the University of Pittsburgh, determined that the data presented was not complete and statistically valid. Therefore, the budget has appropriated $16.7 million for these centers to continue to operate.    

    This budget contains $6.5 million, the same amount as last year, for AIDS programs. Without an increase, this will have a negative impact upon AIDS patients. Pennsylvania has reduced spending from $1,877 per capita in FY 92-93 to $891 in this budget year. This represents a 52.5% decline. Yet today there are three times the number of reported cases of AIDS in PA than five years ago.

    The Drug and Alcohol programs received an extremely small increase over last year, from $37.16 to $37.41 million in this budget year. This amount of money has to be allocated to all 67 single county authorities, so this increase will mean almost nothing. In total there is $99.9 million from all sources of funding in the current year, but the Governor proposes to reduce total funding to $9.34 million next year.

    Services for Children with Special Needs received the same appropriation of $1.7 million this budget year that it had last fiscal year. This appropriation is really two programs in one. The first program is entitled AHome Ventilators@. According to the department it will be allocated $944,000 from the $1.7 million. The Spina Bifida program, the second of the two, was allocated $788,000 for this budget year. Of concern in the past were the restrictions the department placed on funding case management for these programs.

    This budget contains an additional $1.925 million in the General Government Operation line item. $1.4 million of this increase will be directed so that the department can adequately respond to complaints from patients, their families and friends regarding the lack of quality care in nursing homes. The Governor was coaxed in this direction by the a report performed by the Auditor General which indicated that the complaints that were being fielded by the department=s quality assurance division were not timely and did not effectively address the problem. With this additional money in the department, the Governor plans to enhance the use of technology in the complaint-response system. Additionally, more staff will be hired for the complaint-response system and to better investigate and manage complaints.

    One of the many ways this 1998-99 budget differed from the Governor=s request is the inclusion of a new line item entitled AHepatitis Screening and Prevention@. This program will be funded at $300,000. It will be used to deal with the increasing number of people in the state who have hepatitis, many through no fault of their own.