Travis County Commissioners Court
May 30, 2006
Item 14
14. Consider and take appropriate action regarding the following issues: a. Approve form supplemental employment contract with deputy pathologist and authorize chief administrative officer of Travis County medical examiner's office to execute the supplemental employment contracts with deputy pathologists needed to provide interim coverage; b. Approve modification to contract for forensic pathologist services with dr. Fernandez; c. Consider and take appropriate action on proposal to reduce Travis County autopsy caseload; d. Approve amendment of chapter 56 of the Travis County code for out of county autopsies and optional autopsies to update references and attach form private autopsy services contract and consent to autopsy services as exhibit b; and e. Approve form private autopsy contract and consent to autopsy services.
>> okay.
>> thank you. With regards to the supplemental employment contract, the Travis County medical examiner has been negotiating with other medical examiner's offices in Texas to provide interim coverage until we are fully staffed. Especially in light of dr. Peacock's resignation. We have found pathologists who would be willing to provide services at a rate of $500 per autopsy, which would include their expenses such as their travelling expenses and meal, et cetera. We are asking for the court to authorize the chief administrative officer to execute the contract since we are not sure which pathologists will be providing services and we will be negotiating with each one on an individual basis in terms of scheduling, et cetera. The contracts would make the patologists part-time temporary employees so that they could be covered under the Travis County liability coverage policies. There are -- there are two additional terms which are not included in part of the contract. I heard back from kathy self who is with the dallas county medical examiner's office. We had been discussing whether or not the pathologist would do homicide cases. Currently dr. Fernandez does not. They would be to go do the homicide cases, but they would expect to be reimbursed for their expenses for testifying in court. And currently we charge our outside counties $500 to have our pathologist testify. And so we would be looking at that -- an additional 500 to pay if and when a pathologist has to testify in a case that they do for us. In addition, they are asking for a minimum of a thousand dollars per day, that they are scheduled to provide services. That would be two autopsies. Since I致e been there as of March 6th, we have not done less than two cases. Dr. Fernandez typically does at least four cases on the days that he is scheduled to come. But this would provide them some assurance ifs they did travel all the way to Travis County, that they would in fact get a certain minimum amount.
>> it would be easy for us to meet that -- that two case minimum, anyway.
>> yes.
>> for the foreseeable future.
>> based on historical information that should not be a problem.
>> well, what if our practice is simply to hold, if we only have one hold it over until the next day.
>> we could certainly do in a.
>> if it's in our hands. We would really be looking at coverage for days when dr. Bayardo would be off, so in all likelihood there would be cases that day.
>> okay. Let me ask you this. This contract is kind of worded where it would cover not only the pathologists assisting us on an interim basis, but also other medical examiners who may become permanent employees of Travis County. Was that the intention?
>> this contract is just for the supplemental -- it's just a supplemental employment contract. It would not be the same one --
>> actually, the contract -- the contract that you have before you in this is almost exactly the same as the contract that our permanent -- not permanent, that the employees who would be working here full time and not working elsewhere, the differences are that in our regular contract we say that they will work at Travis County, only at Travis County, unless we approve work elsewhere. This one, because we know that their primary job is somewhere else, says and we acknowledge that the primary job is at blank county.
>> yeah.
>> and the second thing is that the regular agreement would include a provision in it about if available within the budget we would pay the cle -- continuing education for them. And I thought in this case that would not be appropriate to include that. But otherwise because they are employees, and we are treating them as employees and not as -- as independent contractors, it seemed appropriate that -- that they be bound by all of the requirements that we would bind another employee by.
>> well --
>> if you want --
>> I have the following changes to recommend. 3.02. My question is why is all of that relevant? Why don't we simply have the contract pathologists perform services as assigned. We go into a whole lot of detail. I guess if you were hired in as a deputy medical examiner, maybe all of this would be relevant. But when I looked at it, I mean, if you are coming here to perform on a contract basis for us, we want you to do work as soiped, right?
>> that's correct.
>> so I guess if I were a contract pathologist, I guess something like that would let me know exactly what's expected of me. It's not like we are just turning them loose. When we come here, we will have a pretty good idea of what we expect them to do before they come, right?
>> yes, sir.
>> and we will give them basically an assignment. So I have got here somewhere in there on assignment by the Travis County chief medical examiner, or any other Travis County employee, duly authorized to make such assignments. And my thinking is something may come up that dr. Bayardo is unavailable, we would want the work to go on. If we really want to try to get this work done in his absence, either the chief administrative officer, executive manager or somebody else would be working with the contract pathologist and really giving the assignments out.
>> is there going to be somebody here on Saturday and Sunday to make the assignments.
>> that would be the concern that I would have is traditional with dr. Fernandez, he has come in, based on the caseload looks at the type of cases, talks to the staff downstairs and then begins providing services.
>> why would the assignment be any bodies that come in on Saturday and Sunday, that assignment is good enough. There's a whole lot of stuff here that I guess that I wondered, I mean, if you -- if the deputy medical examiner I can understand why this is important. But if you are the contract pathologist seems to me if your job is to come in and work with the bodies that come in Saturday and Sunday, that assignment is general knowledge. Anyway, just think about that. The other thing that I have is -- 4.04, we say required facilities, county shall provide dr. With -- with budget for -- I would just delete budget for. We are providing the doctor with the staff, office space and all of the rest of that. Okay?
>> okay.
>> 8.08. At the top line. 8.08. Assignablity.
>> 8.01.
>> I知 sorry, 8.01. That top line, instead of is considering the possibility, I would say the county may consider the feasibility. If we plan to use this for deputy medical examiners, that's what that's for, right? If that is what we are using for deputy medical examiners, I would say may consider it a feasibility. I don't know why we would run off patologists interviewing to come here when we are saying we may to go the district and assign you. A lot more complicated than it is worth at that point. That's my only thinking there. The other thing is 10.04, the post termination liability part, I would add at the end, or not return within blank days of the termination of this contract. We say if you have items that belong to Travis County, we expect you to bring them back or pay the fair market value of it. I don't know that I would leave it open ended. I would just close it. If the contract pathologist more than anything else, it may be that they get back, home bring -- we bring in permanent staff they sort of benignly fail to do it. I don't know why 30 days wouldn't be enough to do it.
>> 7.
>> that's short. Like come on.
>> sometime ought to be there.
>> I think 30 days would be sufficient.
>> ridiculously generous.
>> yeah.
>> the other thing is that -- that I think this contract ought to apply to the contract pathologist. When we -- spend a little bit more time looking at what contract would we expect to find with the deputy medical examiners because there may be some other issue that's we need to address. A lot of them come here with -- with background and sort of an experience experience that they picked up at the place or places that they worked before us. There may be things really important to them that may not be important to us that we would pick up. So I would leave ourselves the flexibility of county sitting down with them and -- and we kind of want them all to be on the same terms and conditions but --
>> this contract that you would be approving is not intended to be used by anybody as it relates to the on authorize to sign it within the [indiscernible] the contract that would be given to the people who would be working full-time for us would come back to Commissioners court with whatever is negotiated into it with those people.
>> any of the things that I mentioned -- don't make sense?
>> no. That makes perfect sense. The one issue that -- that -- I think you got to it in the 3.02 change, would be for example private autopsies. Right now we take them from different outlying counties we expect the pathologists to work on those cases. Traditional they have gotten the fee for doing those, but now they are part of the normal caseloads. One of the contract requires that they be included as parts of the workload. If we are looking at making assignments just as assigned by staff, then we get to that issue without having to specifically mention it.
>> the issue may come real soon, we prioritize our work based on staffing available, we may well have to refer the private autopsies to -- to other places anyway.
>> judge, back to 3.2 for just a second, talking about the changes, you had mentioned something about perhaps a reference or not to a Saturday or a Sunday. I think we should have the maximum flexibility because it could be that dr. Bayardo is out on a Wednesday or Thursday because of illness or whatever, it ought to be reflective date of whatever that -- as opposed to [multiple voices]
>> maximum as assigned.
>> we are actually talking about them providing coverage during the week, so that's an excellent point.
>> they are off on different days, anyway, right?
>> correct.
>> it's possible some may take a week off to come down and provide services for us, there no telling.
>> right.
>> while we are talking about this, sort of an aside, related. We did interview three for the chief medical examiner position, all of them look real good to me. Just that they have different sort of personal issue that's -- that [indiscernible] but -- working with. Makes sense to me with those changes, any problems with those from your perspective.
>> you mentioned your changes. You haven't indicated that it's okay to include the two changes that was mentioned in terms of the $500 for testimony in court and the thousand dollars minimum, would that be part of --
>> that makes sense to me.
>> okay.
>> I kind of thought about that. I guess that's one of the disincentives for doing the homicide autopsies. You know at some point the likelihood of being called back to testify in court is much greater than the non-homicides I guess.
>> that's correct.
>> so that makes sense to me. Any way to make these changes before -- before we end court today at 3:00?
>> I would hope that they could be made before lunch.
>> we don't expect you to work during lunch now. That's asking too much.
>> that's what I said before lunch.
>> [laughter]
>> all right.
>> in case something happens, we leave it with --
>> okay. Then let's move on to b.
>> for b we are asking for modification to dr. Fernandez's contract, we felt that the disparity between what we were paying these other medical examiners and what we would be paying dr. Fernandez, that perhaps we should level the playing field, so to speak, we are asking to modify dr. Fernandez's contract to include a 500 per autopsy provision.
>> his was as at 450, the other pathologists seemed to say $500 is really the market.
>> yes, that's correct. Actually we are paying dr. Fernandez 450 if he does one two or three, he does a fourth then that fee is reduced to 425 per autopsy, that's our current fee for dr. Fernandez. This would be a flat 500.
>> makes accepts to me. Okay sense to me.
>> okay.
>> motion on that, judge?
>> that's fine with me, Commissioner Sonleitner move approval.
>> yes.
>> seconded by Commissioner Gomez. Discussion? All in favor? That passes by unanimous vote.
>> c?
>> in light of the circumstances with dr. Bayardo being the single pathologist after June 16th, we are looking at ways where we might reduce the current caseload that we service. Staff is recommending that we limit the caseload to an average of four cases per day, which would be an average of 120 skies per month. Cases per month until we reach a point where we have the three pathologists on staff, three full-time pathologists. This would mean a reduction in 20 cases per month, approximately. And we see this as a short-term measure until we are fully staffed, then resuming service to whatever counties we may not be able to provide services to. We do anticipate that there will be an impact on revenue as a result of this, if in fact we move in this direction. Regardless of what option the court may or may not consider, staff is recommended that we at this point decline all private autopsies, we are not doing that many. It's hard to gauge based on the information that we pulled from our reports, but probably five or six a month. We try to provide as much relief as possible. Try to prioritize all of the Travis County cases. We consider maintaining services to counties where we have a good working relationship perhaps look at declining cases from county that perhaps express a desire to seek services elsewhere. We put together three options for the court to consider --
>> now there's default under our good government umbrella? Does d fall under our good government umbrella.
>> four.
>> four, I知 sorry.
>> when I say four, my first thought was retaliation.
>> about maintaining counties where we have good working relationships?
>> right.
>> I think there's a pretty high demand for our services. To be honest we have good working relationships with counties and we would like to maintain those. If we have counties that have already looked at or expressed an interest in providing services elsewhere, this may give them an opportunity to do that, determine whether or not they want to continue services with our county. It's not viewed certainly from staff's perspective as being retaliatory, but I understand your concerns. As far as I know we had a good working relationship until certain shortcomings were called to our attention. I don't know that they said anything that was not true. They may have said it in language that I wouldn't have used, but the basic facts alleged turn out to be -- to be true. Nachs an you are the -- that was an unfortunate situation, we righted to rectify it as quickly as possible. All that and more was redredged up by yet another official in this n that particular county. I sense they are not desirous of -- of sending their things this way. I知 -- I知 desirous of them seeking -- seeking help elsewhere. Have a cooling off period here where they go work with somebody else and -- and see how it goes.
>> sending them a thank you letter we stopped doing their autopsies. And in my view that is not good. I will need one week on this anyway. My question at the end is how would we implement something like this. Okay. That was my -- that was my thought when I saw it on Friday. When I mulled over it last night, more convinced I became that it was not a good thing for us to do.
>> okay.
>> there are three options that staff has put together, although there are certainly, you know, many, many more scenarios that could be looked at. The first is -- the way that the regions were broken out in joe lizard's report, included capcog, star flight, what are called out of region counties. If we declined all of the cases from the out of region, approximately 13 counties, that's an average of about 22 cases per month. The range is anywhere from 18 to 30 depending on any given month. That would certainly be an option, option 2 is really looking geographically, determining what the outlying counties are based on a geographic restriction, just from a fewer mile land standpoint, counties in closest proximity to Travis County, maintain based on geographic distinction. The third option, again it's -- it's really just in a sense of -- of trying to identify which county provides the most referrals outside of Travis County and that would be Williamson county. Sort of a clean cut approach would be to just simply not provide services to that one county for a short interim period, redirect them to another county and then pick them back up when we are able to resume services.
>> that's one that I would never be in favor of doing. Not only are they an adjacent county, but -- about a good chunk much the city of Austin -- of the city of Austin, which is the largest city in Travis County is in Williamson county. They are part of -- of capcog, they are part of campo, they are part of star flight, they are our neighbors in every sense and -- and a good portion of my precinct connects to three other precincts in Williamson county. So -- so just because they are the biggest, to me you kick-off the people who are the furthest from Austin. Not who are established partners with Travis County. Williamson county is absolutely -- [indiscernible]
>> option 1 really is decline cases from out of capco region. Right?
>> and star flight.
>> star flight. There are three -- it's geographically divided between capcog, star flight, what are called out of region.
>> option one is just capco?
>> it's just the out of region, 13 counties. It would -- option 1 would include continuing providing services to capcog and star flight. And not to what are being termed the out of region counties. So the star flight counties, bell, burleson, comal, gillespie, guadalupe, lampasas, milam, san saba would still be included.
>> where did the star flight counties come from, what's the source of their list?
>> I do not know this. Is part of joe's report.
>> I have never seen this list. I have never seen it.
>> 19 -- [inaudible - no mic] originally when star flight was created 15, 20 years from now, the service area was defined as a 75-mile radius of Austin or Travis County. And when they got to -- to some point along the way, they realized that that was too confusing of a way of approaching it because that meant that you might have little piece of this county, take outlet a little piece of that county because of your circle, they said okay if you had a little corner of one county, that county was probably pulled out. If you had most of the county, but not all of it, that county would be included as a whole county. So that it became much more manageable in the way that they could determine where they would go and where they wouldn't go. So -- so it came originally from the 75-mile radius, a few adjustments. The list has appeared continuously in -- in protocols that the court has -- has had presented to them and approved in -- in -- at various times in various formats, it was part of the interlocal with the city of Austin as an attachment. It was approved prior to being put -- attached to that as a protocol list, so the list has been brought to court on a number of occasions, usually as a footnote so that's probably why it didn't stand out.
>> just a little bit more, judge, than what is a designated regional trauma area that the state and even the feds designate related to brackenridge being a regional, level one trauma center. Always 11 counties associated with that. This is just a little bit more than that. Brack.
>> so if you were -- if you have a life threatening medical emergency and you were to call star flight, they would to go these counties on the capcog and star flight listings here? And before you you back to brackenridge bring you back to brackenridge.
>> yes.
>> okay. Thild be paying out of county rates.
>> if you ask to go to seton or heart hospital, they would take you to those.
>> somewhere here, though.
>> yes, somewhere in Austin.
>> now, how would we go about implementing this?
>> a lot of it would be contingent upon the staffing needs. If we can get enough coverage through these part-time temporary pathologists from other medical examiner's office, my hope is that we won't have to significantly reduce our caseload. But in the -- in the eventuality that that may occur, then yes putting them on notice that we may have to start declining cases and identifying, you know, which counties we would -- we would identify as declining first and then have a series of -- of, you know, identifying who we would notify and how we would notify them. It could be something that's handle on a day-to-day basis, depending on caseload, pathologists, whether we could accommodate those cases or it could be a blanket for going to decline cases for a period of time this week, this two week period. It could be done in a number of different ways.
>> okay.
>> one that really [indiscernible] is victoria. I appreciate the fact that they are pleased with the services in Travis County, but there are two other medical examiner's offices that are closer and, you know, that's in the out of region and they really need to start establishing some relationships with somebody closer to home, that one is really a big driver in terms of the ones coming in from victoria. When you start averaging 21 a month, you start going excusemy.
>> why haven't we thought about just a strict percentage because we can -- you know, we can identify the number that's we take -- numbers that we take compared to the overall number that's we get and just -- just show that -- that -- that this is the percentage that we can take once you hit that number. You need to be prepared. Everybody understands that I am caught in the statistic thing that Travis County has of issue and -- and we understand that, but, yeah, I would wholeheartedly agree with the judge that I知 not interested at all in telling burnet county, we are not willing to do any of your work and same with Williamson. I mean, but percentage-wise, I think that everybody would understand that, hey, I mean, they are just trying to be judicious with the work, you know, that they can perform in -- they are in a little bit of a behind until they get all of the patologists that they need, so whatever direction or vested direction that I would like to go in, I have been entertained every since day one on how we can get something like victoria so far away that has the right next door to one. And there are probably half the distance to the other one. So obviously, you know, we -- even though there have been some complaints about what we do, from -- from a few people, you know, given the number of autopsies that we do, we obviously are -- are the preferred place to -- to send folks which, you know, can he with be proud of there. So -- we can be proud of there. I would just like to see us work so that somebody says well some Travis County kind of picked on us, I mean, they just sort of selected us out of -- they are not going to do our business. I mean that would be my direction that I would like to see go.
>> I don't know that we ought to expect the county to pay us a couple of thousand dollars for the autopsy, keep paying whether you like what we do or not. Seems to me if they see what they consider to be less than perfect service, they would call it to our attention, we would appreciate it.
>> that's true, I agree.
>> whether it's one county or four or five. I mean the other thing that is the smaller counties did not ask for this responsibility, the law puts on the county the responsibility for getting the autopsy done for that county same as with Travis County. So if we had 0 out of county counties, we would still have to have the medical examiner's office service provided by somebody because the law requires it, right barbara? Approximate we were nengt to harris county, if we conclude it was a lot better than we could do ourselves we would end up paying them. If we thought a couple of the autopsies were not done as well as they should have been, I would like to think harris county would have wanted us to call it to their attention is -- so --
>> staff's concern is that -- is that we recognize that this is going to create a hardship for a lot of these counties. Some of the smaller counties only send us one or two cases a month are going to be hard pressed to come up with alternative plans for where they are going to send their cases. I知 sure that they will come up with something. But just recognizing that the demand for services and actively sought and support those services, we recognize that it's going to create an additional hardship for them.
>> seems that we ought to have a -- for review next week a draft letter to the counties, I知 mindful that we -- that we recently approved another draft letter. But I guess the draft letter would say effective July one we may have to implement the attached caseload reduction strategy? And just sort of lay it out. The steps trying to avoid the need to do that, post July 1, right if.
>> that memo has not gone out to the counties yet. We don't have the final form of that. If we do, we will get that out.
>> but I think that we should remind them that we really are trying to fill these positions.
>> yes.
>> in the interim, here are the steps we put in place, but there's another vacancy that would occur July 1, so if some of the other steps have for the been implemented -- not been, then we may have to take even more drastic steps, that way the proposal makes sense.
>> between now and next week, I think we need to decide whether to decide on these options or the fourth option that Commissioner Daugherty set out really was that we try to set out a percentage of our caseload, what do we have to reduce it by in order to get to the number that we want to, right if.
>> yeah.
>> that would seem to be as fair. Why don't you think about that --
>> can I get some clarification on that. Would that be reducing caseload for all of the counties based on a percentage basis?
>> yeah. I think that would be the fairest thing. Obviously you don't round them off to zero. You get one if you are one of those counties that only sends us one, you know, you are going to get that wowp. -- get that one. But if you send us 66 your percentage may show that hey we can only take this many, once we hit that number, then you have got -- you need to have plan b. And -- in place.
>> you know the nature of the work is that we might not get any cases for a week, we might get 8 in the next week. It is sort of a very fluctuating sort of environment. So it makes it a little challenging, I definitely understand your approach. Just capping it at a certain number based on the percentage.
>> almost have to reduce it to the monthly. Saying if the reduction is this for this county it would be an annual number, right then then that divided by 12 will get you the monthly number. That's how we control it. If we take private off the top from other counties as well as Travis County, we take off how many? Was that the five --
>> it's hard to say, five or six cases a month would be my estimate.
>> yeah, I would look at that carefully. And if there are others that are not required to be done, then I would like at those. I don't know offhand what they would be.
>> that's where it gets to the out of region.
>> yeah.
>> these are just not -- they may be good partners and we've had a good working relationship, but the reality is that in terms of who I feel like we have a responsibility to are the folks that are -- that are in our absolutely our campo region, absolutely our capcog region, absolutely within our star flight region because these are -- these are working relationships, but once we get out of region, I just don't feel like it's up to Travis County to resolve the problems in -- in [indiscernible]
>> why don't we do this then, look at the out of region, all of those above the initial 18 or 19, and in our own minds try to figure out whether they pass up any forensic centers to get here. And whether they pass up one or two. You may want to contact a forensic center closer to you than we are to provide services on an interim basis. The reality of the matter is that if they were to contract with other forensic center and find out that the services that are good and they have a good working relationship, it may be that we lose that business. If we can deal where that, it would be a revenue hit at a time when we are increasing expenditures in order to make sure that we are doing everything as -- as -- as right as we can, right?
>> yes, sir.
>> > some would say if I have reduce mine by 20%, I have to go to another forensic center with that 20%, maybe I should try to get to that forensic center with 100% of it, I would be real surprise understand we don't lose a few just that way. And but at least on that one they have made the choice. We benefit the same as they. But it's -- it's kind of a big issue. The other thing is that -- that awe got this number of counties -- that we got this number of counties because it was a pretty good relationship historically for a handful of them until 12 or 24 months ago, so if we can retain good relationships I have no problem with doing that. If we have to lose them, it makes sense to me to try to have that as a sort of decision that both of us make. But to the extent that we have to impose it, then I think we ought to try to be as fair as possible.
>> any other ideas, I think we ought to look at c next week, four options, three you brought, one Commissioner Daugherty added. Anything else on c?
>> d?
>> this last one deal was the private up a cases which -- which we are -- we are recommending that we suspend for no we receive private up a requests from families, sometimes we receive them from medical institutions. What we have done is looked at the old contract that we had, revised that contract, so that -- that payment, et cetera, in revising that contract, also requires apparently revision to chapter 56 of the Travis County code.
>> am I correct that -- that -- that legally the county has the authority to prioritize autopsies and really stop doing these.
>> in terms of private autopsies, yes.
>> right.
>> okay. Any other questions about d? That was my only question about d, whether we legally -- we have done it historically as kind of a favor, there are private pathologists who will pick this up, but they charge a fee.
>> it is often difficult to find one that will, which is why we get the cases that we do get, there are other services that do provide that, they may have to travel to get to them.
>> not here in Travis County.
>> correct. Not that I知 aware of.
>> I am not aware of where the services are. The law --
>> the board of medical examiners would know exactly that, right?
>> I don't know if the board -- these would be private forensic pathologists that would provide these services. Medical examiners will have to be licensed by the state same as ours.
>> yes.
>> part of that license share where you will be doing business, would it be --
>> yes.
>> would it be pretty easy for us to make a few phone calls, if somebody comes in at say look, you know, you did my cousin five years ago, do one for me, we say that we have sim trearl decided not to -- temporarily decided not to do other autopsies because the caseload, but here's a list of five, you may want to contact, unfortunately they are out of Travis County, this is the best that you can do for me. We save ourselves a lot of agony. Save the Commissioner Daugherty a whole lot of phone calls -- safe the Commissioners court a whole lot of phone calls, too.
>> they referred them to 1-8 1-800-autopsy.
>> that's fine with me if that will work.
>> here in Texas that they can be referred to. I actually have used that.
>> that's a little bit more impersonal --
>> but -- if that will get it done.
>> can we call and make sure that they --
>> yes.
>> I will call and make sure that -- that it's for real.
>> medical examiner referral kind of like lawyer referral?
>> kind of.
>> all right.
>> motion on d and e? All in favor? Passes on unanimous vote. C for next week, a for this afternoon, with the changes, anything else on this item today?
this morning we discussed item number 18 specifically part a, I said 18. 14. 14 a. Ms. Wilson made a couple changes and gave us a revis revised draft. She got with the auditor I guess and made other changes which she distributed over lunch and which we have before us.
>> the first change was to 302 so that we would delete all the specific information about determining whether or not a case could be done by the deputy and simply replace that with as assigned by the chief medical examiner or his design ee. In 4.01 we addressed the auditor's concern about whether or not these people would have employee benefits benefits. As long as they worked only two days in a week it would not be a problem because they would not be eligible under our policy. But if one of them should happen for a full week for us it would be like they flip on, flip off, flip on. This makes it clear that they won't be getting any of the employee benefits from us, they will be getting it from their primary employer employerthis was kind of a big deal for them, I guess.
>> for the auditor? Yes.
>> the contract medical examiners? Was it important to them too too?
>> in terms of the employee been fits? No because we haven't discussed that with them. But they understood in our discussions with them that they would not be getting benefits from us because we had originally anticipated that they would be working less than $19 a week and therefore would not be eligible.
>> the primary concern that they had was that they be covered under the liability coverage.
>> okay.
>> that was the reason for making them part-time temporary employee. They were not anticipating getting any other benefit as a result of this arrangement.
>> okay, liability coverage.
>> the one employee benefit that they do retain is workers' compensation because we would need to keep that coverage.
>> okay.
>> compensation provision was changed so that they would be paid a minimum for each date on which they performed servicesservices of $1,000 and they would receive 500 for testifying in court. Then we added the provision that these rates would include all costs incurred by the doctor related to performing the services under this contract including travel, meals and lodging if they need that.
>> okay.
>> oh, actually, 044 we deleted with budget 4. 8.01 we changed from is considering the possibility to may consider the feasibility of creating a district. And then in 10.04 we made it clear that they needed to return anything that they had to belonged to the county within 30 days or provide us with a check for the cost of it within 90 days, whichever. Course they chose to take and which fit.
>> excellent changes, in my book.
>> second.
>> that's why I move for approval of 14 a. Discussion? All in favor? That passes by unanimous vote. Thank you all for your excellent work over the lunch hour.
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Last Modified:
Wednesday, May 31, 2006 9:38 AM