Update given on the Central Iowa Community Service

A Central Iowa Community Services update was given by operations officer Jody Eaton at Tuesday’s Jasper County Board of Supervisors meeting.

The organization covers 10 central counties including Boone, Franklin, Hamilton, Hardin, Jasper, Madison, Marshall, Poweshiek, Story and Warren. It was formed to create a Mental Health and Disability Service Region in compliance with state code.

“There has been a transition the last couple years as we slowly moved to a regionalization process and we are ready for another phase,” Eaton said.

In this phase, different job functions were assigned to the county directors by the CEO. In the first phase, the directors were assigned to different committees. Deb Schildroth of Story County is the CEO with responsibilities including monitoring and interpreting legislation, giving oversight to regional staff and overseeing all service, finance and planning and program development among other tasks.

Jill Eaton, from Marshall County, is the acting finance officer, Russell Wood of Franklin County the planning officer, Jody Eaton of Jasper County the operations officer, John Grush of Boone County the compliance officer and several coordination officers including Linn Adams for the east, Patti Treibel for the west and Betsy Stursma for the south. The duties and responsibility were discussed for each of the positions.

A new program that will potentially be available for the Jasper County Jail and the local hospitals is Telehealth, which is a psychiatric service.

“They would be able to provide psychiatric services on-site,” Eaton said.

It would help alleviate the long wait for the jail to get psychiatric services to the inmates, which is currently about 45 days. It will also save money by not having to transfer inmates to and from the services.

An order to authorize a privacy officer or security officer to sign business associate agreements was approved to comply with Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA) regulations. Confidential agreements are needed for those outside businesses and services that come in while confidential information is being discussed.

In other business:

• Monte Marchant was hired by the Jasper County Sheriff’s Office as at part-time transport officer. A current transport officer is leaving and this hire will replace that person. Marchant has a start date of Tuesday with a pay rate of $12.64 per hour.

• The cancellation of outstanding Treasurers checks was approved by the board for those checks that are more than a year old and have not been obtained. Jasper County Treasurer Doug Bishop also gave a report on the balance sheets.

Contact Jamee A. Pierson at
641-792-3121 ext. 6534 or
jpierson@newtondailynews.com