Reading Joins Melrose-Wakefield Health Department Partnership

The , which undertook management of Wakefield's Health Department two years ago, is expanding a little further north this fall.

Reading will become the newest partner in the regionalized health department model currently shared between Melrose and Wakefield, city officials announced at a press conference on Tuesday morning.

Melrose becomes the service provider for Reading, mirroring the city's arrangement with Wakefield, with current Melrose Health Director Ruth Clay managing all three health departments. Coincidentally, before coming to Melrose, Clay previously worked as Reading's health director under current Reading Town Manager Peter Hechenbleikner.

Clay said that Reading is a good fit for an additional partner, as the three communities are not only next door to one another, but share similar population sizes, demographics and characteristics.

"It’s really important, I think, that when these agreements come together that there’s no perception of one community taking over another community," she said.

Unlike the previously beleaguered Wakefield Health Department, which Clay said "needed a lot of work" when the two communities joined forces, Reading already has a stable department and Clay expects a seamless integration.

"The Health Department there has a full-time health inspector, a part-time health inspector, a 30-hour a week nurse and a secretary," she said. "So they’re well-staffed, they’re able to take care of what needs to be done. My role will be supervisory and management."

Cost savings for all three communities

As the service provider and with Clay remaining a Melrose employe, Melrose will pay the majority of the health department's $286,000 budget, pitching in 55 percent of the costs, according to Patrick Dello Russo, Melrose city auditor and chief financial officer.

With Reading joining the partnership, Melrose will net an additional $32,000 each year.

Wakefield will pay approximately 30 percent, more than $87,000, to Melrose, which will save the town an additional $10,000 a year. Under the current partnership, Wakefield pays 36 percent, approximately $97,000 a year.

Reading will pay 15 percent of the cost of the health department, approximately $43,000 a year. Dello Russo said Reading will pay less than Wakefield because the former is already well-staffed.

"It’s been tremendously advantageous," Dello Russo said of the partnership so far. "This is the gift that’ll keep on giving."

Sharing resources

Besides the cost savings, Mayor Rob Dolan said the partnership will allow the three communities to share resources and work collaboratively in areas such as flu vaccination clinics and combating drug and alcohol abuse.

Clay noted that Reading has a federal Drug Free Community grant—the same grant just renewed for Melrose—and that Reading Coalition Against Substance Abuse Director Erica McNamara and Melrose Substance Abuse Prevention Coordinator Jen Kelly have already worked together.

Kelly added, "We have regional meetings for coalitions and we hope to work even more closely together."

Also, with two ccommunities already receiving the Drug Free Community grants, Clay said either Reading or Melrose will apply for a mentoring grant through that federal program next year, to try and get Wakefield on board also.

Also, community's individual Board of Health, each of which will remain in place, would be interested in streamlining fee structures and regulations that aren't already set by the state, said 

The additional resources would also allow each community to tap resources in the other two communities in the case of a localized health emergency, Clay said.

Different models for different communities

Dolan said that Hechenbleikner previously expressed interested in having Reading joining the regionalized health department, but that he and Wakefield Town Manager Steve Maio wanted to make sure the model worked first.

"The key to this is not forcing a square peg in a round hole," Dolan said, adding that while he'd like Melrose to explore regionalization of other departments—in the near future, particularly information technology, veterans, assessing and building inspections—in some cases, such as with the Council on Aging, he believes a regional approach wouldn't work.

Clay said the state has been pushing for regionalization of municipal health services "for a long time," and that she served on a statewide regionalization advisory board. However, the state tried to push communities into particular structures, while several different models have worked well in different parts of the state.

For example, Clay said on Cape Cod, local health departments purchase services from the Barnstable County Health Department, such as septic services or food inspections, and in Nashoba Valley, 15 central Massachusetts towns have an Associated Board of Health. Both models differ from the collaborative Melrose-Wakefield-Reading model.

"The health departments in northeastern Massachusetts are different from the departments on the Cape and the ones in western Mass.," she said. "None better or worse—just different arrangements."