Commissioner of DHHS, Mary Mayhew Guest Speaker; Rep Sirocki Visits
Commissioner of DHHS, Mary Mayhew was the guest speaker on Tuesday, August 26th along with State Representative Heather Sirocki.
August 26th Meeting
Candy introduced Mary Mayhew, commissioner of the Department of Health & Human Service. She appreciated the opportunity to get out of Augusta and share with us what is going on in her department of 3,200 employees with an annual budget $3,400,000,000. Medicaid’s share is $2,400,000.00 consisting of many different programs and funding streams. Since 2001 it has grown from serving 180,000 people to 345,000 people today. It has gone from being 14 % to 25 % of the state budge
The ending of the 3 year $600,000,000 Federal Economic Recovery funding led to a cash shortage. It resulted in not being able to pay the hospitals until recently. The last 3 ½ years have been spent stabilizing the program. Mary stressed that they had to get beyond “bailing out the boat”. The last physical year’s funding has been flat.
With Maine’s increasing aging population, the need to plan is paramount. How do you balance all these priorities? They had to get beyond “crisis mode”. 5 % of the recipients account for 55 % of the expenditures. They are extreme situations with clients requiring 24 x 7 services.
She described a situation of 75 year old parents with a 50 year old autistic son as being representative of some of the 3,000 people on her waiting list that she does not have the funding to service. This has been her primary focus. She needs $45,000,000 accommodate that waiting list. She is attempting to find the funds by leveraging Federal dollars. They are constantly reappraising resources to best meet their needs.
Working collaboratively with both the Departments of labor and education, they have created work-study programs as they try to put people to work. One of her managers is a former client! Today, there are 7,000 openings in the job bank.