2019-04-24 Merit Appeals Board Minutes

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Merit Appeals Board April 24, 2019 Logistically, the Big Island—across-the-board—we don’t have enough healthcare providers and it shows up in our work comp arena as well. So, good question, but it’s just a problem that we just deal with it as best we can. It costs us more money—no doubt about it—to accommodate. So, in addition to bringing Sommer on board as a supervisor claims—supervising claims adjustor, we’re also going to do an internal re-org. with the current positions we have. And we’re going to move—we’re going to increase our claims adjusting staff. We’re going to take a technician position and we’re moving her up to an adjustor. She—that position, historically, even though it’s a technician—has handled a large amount of claims—have been assigned to her in the past. So, we’re just expanding her role and clear—better defining her responsibilities. So—yet, we’re in the process of getting that re-allocation finalized. And then, the final thing we were going to do is, we have a HR assistant, who is kind been of working part-time on HR/work comp—I’m sorry—part-time on work comp and safety. She did the clerical work for the safety office. So, we’re going to move that position permanently to work comp. And that, kind of, leads me into my next subject area and, fortunately, the last one so far is my budget submittal or budget reviews. So, last week Thur.—last week—when was—this past Tuesday— MS. YAMADA: Wednesday—last week. MR. BRILHANTE: Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah, yeah—last week Wednesday was my budget review. We submitted our budget to council, we went in front of council—it was well-received. For the most part, my budget is status quo. No significant increases, no significant reductions. We did—at the end of the year we will be realizing a change—a reduction in our salary and wages. Primarily, because I had a senior staff, Gabe Cabanas—she had nearly 40 years of st service. She retired last year, effective December 1 and because of her years of service, her salary was really high. She was at the almost the top scale of her class. I mean, she retired, I brought Waylen, we was so fortunate to get Waylen Leopoldino back with us. But because he has so much less years of service, he started at a much lower step on the salary scale—so, that’s a realized savings for our department. So, that came across-the-board and we actually had a small little reduction in our operating budget, especially for salary and wages. But that doesn’t mean I’m—I was comfortable with that. What I did was I submitted a supplemental budget. And in my supplemental request I requested three positions. And the first position was for a clerical position in my work comp division. And that will come in and that’ll help somebody—that will help with our monthly reconciliation for each claim. Every month we have to look at the claims and we have to do—kind of, like, a tabulation as to how much money we spend on doctor’s bills, medication, and stuff and—in regards to how much money we have set aside for each claim. So, we do that for each case on a monthly basis—that hasn’t been done as well as I would have liked it to have been done. Page 9