Riverside Board to Consider Range of Public Health Fee Revisions

The Board of Supervisors is slated today to approve
a bevy of fee hikes tied to Riverside County Department of Public Health
services, under a fee schedule revised to reflect inflation-driven impacts to
the agency.
  

The public hearing will follow one from early March in which the board
tentatively signed off on the proposed adjustments.
  

Department of Public Health Director Kim Saruwatari said that the
Auditor-Controller's Office had scrutinized the proposal and determined the new
rates would be ``equitable and reasonable to recover the cost of providing
services.''
  

``These new and revised public health program fees are necessary to
meet the on-going operational and maintenance costs of providing public health
program services to Riverside County residents,'' according to an agency
statement posted to the board's agenda.
  

In a few instances, fees have been put forward where none existed
previously. For the department's ``mobile team vaccines'' service, the cost of
administering a Gardisil human papillomavirus 9 variant inoculation would go
from zero to $330. Similarly, to receive the Boostrix TDAP vaccine via a mobile
clinic would cost $50, where there was no charge before. Any mobile vaccination
clinic service would additionally include administration fees -- ranging from
$2 to $90, depending on economic hardship -- which haven't been charged in the
past.
  

To obtain a ``dog importation health certificate,'' the department
would in the future charge $26 for the service. There was previously no cost
attached to the certificate.
  

A number of laboratory processing fees are set to be increased. A
tuberculosis culture analysis would go from $20 to $50, while a basic ``culture
for identification'' would jump from $17 to $50. An HIV antibody screening
would go from $28 to $36.12, and the cost of an HIV-1 and HIV-2 genus
confirmation would be raised from $46 to $58.06.
  

The new up-front cost for procuring any medical documents loaded onto
a CD, such as images of X-rays and CT scans, would be $25. In the past, this
has been a complimentary service provided by the department.
  

Health insurance providers, including government-subsidized Medi-Cal,
would likely pick up many of the new expenses, though co-pay costs were
unknown.
  

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