VNAs Benefit from Regional Health District Covering Old Saybrook, Clinton, and Deep River, Connecticut

REGIONAL - While it's sometimes difficult to adapt to change, change proved to be a good thing for several Visiting Nursing Associations, VNA's, when their towns joined the Connecticut River Area Health District.

Public officials and residents of Essex and Westbrook have expressed concerns on whether their local VNA's would be affected if they too decided to join a district which currently consists of Old Saybrook, Clinton, and Deep River.

Mary Jane Engle, director of the health district, said the district's goal is not to duplicate services but rather work with municipal departments in an effort to meet residents' public health needs.

Engle said the district has allowed the various VNA representatives to come together at one table and address needs that are common to residents in each town.

"In understanding how to work together, the end result is better services for residents, the district ensures that services residents need are provided, the health district does not need to provide them directly," Engle said.

Candy Marien, the administrator for the Deep River VNA, said the district allows her and her staff to concentrate its resources solely on home healthcare needs.

Before Deep River joined the district, Marien said, the VNA was balancing between meeting home healthcare needs and dealing with major public health concerns such as the avian flu.

The district "really takes away the competition (between VNA's) and helps us work on the same page and I think it is a benefit to everyone," Marien said.

Joanne Dymitruk, the Vice President of Clinical Services for the VNA of Southeastern Connecticut which serves Old Saybrook residents, said the district "allows more depth and a better ability to solve problems."

Dymitruk said this cooperation is "much better than each town trying to do their own thing," and enables the creation of services that small towns with part-time health directors are unable to provide.

According to the Connecticut Department of Public Health, several towns in the lower Connecticut River Valley area have part-time health directors. These towns include Westbrook, Essex, Chester, Old Lyme, Lyme, Haddam, Killingworth, Durham, and Middlefield.

Engle is hopeful that more towns join the district realizing the benefit of an economy of scale and how a health district enables a town to provide more services for its residents.

The Connecticut Department of Public Health Web site states that of the state's 169 towns, 108 belong to a regional health district while 31 have municipal full-time health departments and 30 have municipal part-time health departments.

All health departments carry out critical public health functions which include infectious disease control, environmental health, enforcing state public health codes, the legal authority to levy fines and penalties for public health violations, as well as the granting and rescinding of license permits for food service establishments and septic systems.