Health Dep’t explains changes

The Defi­ance County Health Depart­ment says that changes are com­ing and they will alter its pub­lic mis­sion. Many of the immu­niza­tions now offered by the health depart­ment will not be avail­able there.

Because the Afford­able Care Act now cov­ers immu­niza­tions at 100 per­cent, the Health Depart­ment will not be giv­ing children’s immu­niza­tions, except for the Vac­cines for Chil­dren (VFC) patients, which include those on Med­ic­aid and those who have no insurance.

Kim Moss, the Defi­ance County health com­mis­sioner said the depart­ment used to give thou­sands of flu vac­cines. “Now it is between 200–250 a year. That is because flu vac­cines are avail­able at phar­ma­cies every­where,” she said.
Phar­ma­cies start giv­ing their flu vac­cines early in the fall and we can’t start ours until our vac­cines arrive in October.

Moss said not hav­ing to devote time and funds to giv­ing vac­cines will give the depart­ment more time to pur­sue its com­mu­nity health plan that is being put together after all of the data from the health assess­ment is studied.

One health con­cern for the county is obe­sity. “We will have to retrain our peo­ple and per­haps hire dif­fer­ent peo­ple for dif­fer­ent jobs. We will be work­ing on this in the next six months,” said Moss.