Commission delays initiating health care study

The Manatee Board of County Commissioners voted Tuesday to delay initiating a health care study that would provide the basis for a formal healthcare plan in the county.

At its regular meeting Tuesday morning, the board unanimously agreed that it would seek community input before paying $196,000 to the Manatee Chamber Foundation — working in conjunction with the University of South Florida Public Health — to complete the yearlong health care study. 

The board will discuss the proposal again at its June 12 meeting.

“Let’s talk to the community so we know that when we spend the money, the community is behind us,” said District 5 Commissioner Vanessa Baugh, who said she will discuss the potential study at a town hall meeting in Lakewood Ranch she hosts in early June, before the commission considers the issue again. “We have to do something (to address health care). The question is how and what. I don’t know if the public thinks this is the right thing.”

Manatee County officials and local health care experts have called for a long-term plan for health care here, as a potential crisis looms.

A health care trust fund that provided about $9 million annually for medical and mental care to people in need will be depleted in 2016, county officials say. 

Money to pay for the new study would come from the health care trust fund. 

In June of last year, Manatee County voters rejected a special referendum that asked if they wanted to pay an extra one-half percent in sales tax to fund indigent health care — money that would replenish the trust fund.

Commissioners say they regret allowing that referendum to happen in the first place, believing the action was rushed and overwhelmed by politics. 

The commission previously approved a payment of $267,000 to USF for a similar health care study the university conducted in 2008. 

County staff says the new study would be more focused and come with a specific action plan. 

“The idea is this would be as specific as possible,” said John Petrila, a health lawyer who will lead the study on behalf of USF. “This is not an academic exercise. It is not research. We will go into the community and develop consensus and ideas.”

Contact Josh Siegel at [email protected].