Derek Adams, environmental health specialist, and Crystal Baker, preparedness coordinator and office manager, spoke with the board on the hiring of two additional nurses and the increase in salary pay, making sure figures were also comparable to counties of similar size and funding to Hancock County.
Lacey Watt | Daily Reporter
HANCOCK COUNTY – The Hancock County Council approved the addition of two new nurses to the Hancock County Health Department and to increase nurses’ pay at the last council meeting on Wednesday.
Derek Adams, an environmental health specialist for the health department, said that adding two more nurses to the staff will help fill responsibilities in case another nurse is ill or is unable to work. It also is part of the new requirements that Adams said the health department must meet as part of the Health First Indiana plan the county opted into last year.
Passed in the 2023 legislative session, Health First Indiana is the state’s initiative that was created by Senate Enrolled Act 4 to help “ensure that every Hoosier has access to the core public health services that allow them to achieve their optimal health and well-being.”
Adams said one of those requirements is to have programs for maternal/child health, which includes preconception counseling all the way to the birth of the baby, immunizations and more. With these programs, one of the newly hired nurses will take on this responsibility.
The other new-hire nurse will be for chronic disease prevention, which involves cancer prevention and supplying resources, programs to help with county-wide obesity numbers and more.
“First and foremost, we have to get the people into our office to be able to even think about putting these programs on,” Adams said.
Adams said that all employees will be cross-trained to some degree so they can help in the case that one of the nurses is out.
“We’ve got everybody stretched basically to the capacity with the amount of responsibilities that we have,” Adams said.
As far as salaries are concerned, after suggestions from the salary committee and looking at comparable counties in size – such as Morgan and Wayne counties – the council had approved a salary increase up to $62,000 for health department nurses with the nursing supervisor receiving an additional $12,500.
Adams said the health department is working on getting approval from the county council for hiring another environmental health specialist, specifically to focus on food protection. While he isn’t sure how much the county council would decide on for the environmental health specialist salary, Adams said when looking at the numbers, other counties are paying from $64,000 up to $72,000.
The salary committee was scheduled that Wednesday to look at the salaries for the position of environmental health specialist and to come back to next month’s council meeting with what they discussed.
“We’d like to get everybody up comparable to what they can make at any other county health department to keep our talent in house,” Adams said. “So that we don’t lose the people that have been here 20-25 years, that have the knowledge and the experience to keep everything running.”
