Explanation
BACKGROUND: The purpose of this ordinance is to authorize the City Auditor to create a new subfund within the city’s Special Purpose Fund to account for the skin testing activities of the Benjamin Franklin Tuberculosis Clinic at Columbus Public Health. The Board of Health established a fee structure for skin tests in August, 2004. At the time, fees were deposited into the TB Prevention/Control Grant in the Health Department Grants Fund, Fund No. 251. Because Columbus Public Health no longer receives a TB Prevention/Control Grant, it is necessary to move the accounting of these activities from the Grant Fund to the Special Purpose Fund.
The TB Program bills fees to clients' third party insurance companies when available, and uses a sliding fee scale based on Federal Poverty Guidelines, so no clients are denied services due to the inability to pay. When the Board of Health established this fee, it was their intent that residents of Columbus and Franklin County should continue to have access to healthcare, and that the new fees would enhance the mission of TB control and elimination. The creation of a new subfund in the city’s Special Purpose Fund will allow Columbus Public Health to continue the Board’s intent that these fees enhance the mission of TB control and elimination.
After the City Auditor has created the new subfund, this ordinance also authorizes and directs the City Auditor to close-out the TB Prevention/Control Grant by transferring all monies in Grant No. 507104 to the new TB subfund in the Special Purpose Fund, Fund No. 223, and appropriating those monies to the Health Department.
FISCAL IMPACT: Currently, revenues collected from TB skin testing activities are deposited into the Health Department Grants Fund, Fund No. 251, TB Prevention/Control Grant, Grant No. 507104. Utilizing the city’s Special Purpose Fund provides the best means for the TB Clinic to continue to properly track and account for these monies.
This ordinance ...
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