Health dept. to offer new physicals | News, Sports, Jobs

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The Belmont County Board of Health discusses physicals that will soon be offered at the health department.

ST. CLAIRSVILLE — Physicals for a variety of purposes will soon be available at the Belmont County Health Department.

The health department, which now has nurse practitioner Natalie Blowers on staff, recently started offering the services. Sports and pre-employment physicals are already available, but now commercial driver’s license and department of transportation physicals will be available for $120 while pre-employment physicals, which includes getting a physical if someone needs it for going back to work, will be $90. Any other physicals, such as sports physicals for students, will be $30. Blowers is certified to perform the physicals.

The CDL and DOT are more in depth than the pre-employment physicals, leading to the higher price.

The health board, which met Monday afternoon, wants to set everything in place before offering the physicals, including talking to insurance companies about the plan and pricing. Physicals previously had to be paid for in cash.

Director of Nursing Gabby Timko told the board that she and staff visited Oakview Juvenile Residential Center to administer vaccines because she noticed many of the juveniles housed there were behind on their vaccines. The administered a total of 145 vaccines.

The department also visited Hilltop Health in Colerain to administer 18 flu shots.

The department has seen an increase in pediatric pneumonia, so it talked to WVU Medicine Wheeling Hospital.

Officials there advised the department to send out a public service announcement to Belmont County schools to monitor for symptoms to help the department catch the pneumonia earlier. Timko saidthere have been a lot of hospitalizations from it.

There are two new environmental health specialists – Erin Cullen and Emily Cook – in training at the National Environmental Health Association, Environmental Director Rich Lucas said. The two took their tests for the National Environmental Health Association. Lucas is waiting for official results to come in so he can send them to the state to have the pair certified as registered environmental specialists.

Lucas read the final reading of Resolution 9-2024, creating a uniform system of environmental and food fees. The environmental fees will not be changing this year except for septic evaluations to go up from $250 to $300. Under current law, vending machine fees may be increased only up to the current level of the consumer price index for the current calendar year, or 3.4% for 2024.

Resolution 8-2024 is to retroactively approve the payment for overtime accrued during the COVID response (2020, 2021, 2022, 2023) for classified, unclassified and part-time employees.

Board members Joel Braido, Dominic DeFelice, Jerry Moore, Dr. Wayne Groux, Darby Copeland and Elizabeth Glick approved both resolutions.

The health department has held Friday jeans events, where the staff donated money for the privilege of wearing jeans to work. As a result, the department was able to donate $220 worth of toys to the county commission’s toy drive.

The board concluded the meeting with a closed-door session to consider compensation of a public employee.