Pike District Six Magistrate Chris Harris brought a proposal before the Pike County Fiscal Court at its regular meeting Tuesday regarding the partnership, asking the court to file a resolution in support of the project.
Harris is working with Social Services Director Carol Napier to create a joint venture between the counties. Napier is helping coordinate the effort.
The Fiscal Court voted unanamously to support the partnership.
“It will be a strong application for funding,” Judge Executive Wayne T. Rutherford said. “I really feel you can get approval for this. It would be a great asset.”
In other matters discussed at the meeting, Judge Rutherford spoke about the cut in funding for Kentucky Homeplace. A $750,000 cut by the Kentucky Cabinet for Health and Family Services has caused the Kentucky Homeplace Pro-gram to close down until July, at least.
The program, which operates within the Univer-sity of Kentucky Center for Health in Rural Excellence, provides free medical, social and environmental services to those in need. During its 15 years of existence, it has provided tens of thousands of rural Kentuckians with medication, services, and items such as eyeglasses, hearing aids and wheelchairs that citizens would not have otherwise been able to receive.
According to Homeplace data, in the past 18 months, it has provided 21,852 Kentuckians nearly 700,000 services valued at more than $3.6 million and given them nearly $39 million worth of free medications. Of those 21,852 served, more than 3,000 were from Pike, Floyd, Letcher and Magoffin counties.
“What this cut has done is hurt people who are already hurting,” Rutherford said.
“I was approached by someone with Homeplace, and have been working with the Pike County Resource Interagency Coalition to help those affected,” Carol Napier said.
Napier told Kentucky Homeplace often helped persons during a gap in prescription medication coverage.
“A lot of individuals who contact us are in need of medication,” Napier ex-plained. “When they work with the pharmacuetical companies, there is a thirty day gap before they can receive their medication. That bridge needs to met. We have gone throught social services and Ken-tucky Homeplace to help those people.”
She said that is just one of the many instances of Homeplace helping the citizens of the county. She said Pike County Health Department will try to absorb as much of the loss of funds as possible, but that agency is already stretched thin.
The Fiscal Court passed a resolution to be sent to Gov. Beshear’s office showing their support of Kentucky Homeplace and asking that funding be restored.
Possible cuts to another program which provides medical services was also brought to the attention of Fiscal Court. According to Rutherford, the Shriner’s Hospital in Lexington is in danger of closing.
“Pike County has more patients in that hospital than any other county in the commonwealth,” the judge said. “The hospital plays an indespensible role in caring for the citizens of the county. Hundreds of children have been helped.”
He told the court that a consulting firm has been hired by the hospital to explore the possiblility of closing the facility. He explained the Lexington hospital is not in financial trouble, but the overall state of the economy has caused donations to the Shriners to decline, and the closing would simply be a money saving move. He added that the local Shrine club has provided well over $100,000 other fundraising events.
The court passed the resolution to show support to the Lexington Shriner’s Hospital.
Post a Comment
