The Battle for Title X – Wrap-Up

Over the past week I’ve written several posts about the contract to provide Family Planning services to individuals in Shelby County. The first post dealt with the political issues involved. The second post took a look at the services to be provided and inconsistencies in scoring based on the quantity of those services. Yesterday I pointed out concerns relating to the ability and/or willingness of one of the potential contractors to fulfill the requirements of the Title X program. Unfortunately, the County didn’t respond to my inquiry about who asked the questions that would lead one to believe they could not fulfill these requirements on the grounds of their “ethical beliefs”.

On Sunday, Wendi Thomas at the Commercial Appeal wrote an article about the issue, and brought up some additional concerns. In that article, she quoted a previous article where the founding physician of CCHC indicated they would not follow the letter of the regulation relating to referrals for pregnancy termination. From her article:

“We really try to provide women with other options and make sure they have those possibilities. And if they at the end still want a pregnancy termination, we know they know where to go,” Rick Donlon told The Commercial Appeal last month. (Source)

There’s one simple truth about receiving public money for a service:

“Play by the rules, or the money goes away.”

For something like Family Planning, the cost of the money going away is huge. The thousands of people served by these funds would be left abandoned without the benefit of these services. If they go away that means a whole lot of women will get pregnant, quite possibly at a time when they aren’t ready. The pressures that unwanted pregnancy will place on them, and the community at large, are huge. Quite honestly, we can’t afford to play games with this money.

I understand there are those in state and local government that have a problem with PPGMR, who has been providing the services for some time in this community. I wish they would acknowledge that those problems have little to do with the actual services that PPGMR renders with this money, and more to do with a service they provide that the money doesn’t touch. Remember, no Federal money can go for providing abortions according to the Hyde Amendment.

That said, Title X funds recipients are bound by the terms of their contract to refer women who ask to a place that does provide abortion. Saying “I think they know where to go” doesn’t fit with the demands the money places on the provider.

There’s another issue that I haven’t touched on, and that’s of staffing. PPGMR already has staff in place to serve people under this program. They’ve been doing it for years, so of course they do. CCHS doesn’t. They explicitly list that they will have to hire 7 people just to execute the contract (you can find this on p. 14-15 of their proposal). That’s a huge problem. How long will it take to get that staff in place and trained? What makes CCHS so much different from the Health Department, who initially refused the money for the very same reasons? Why does CCHS think they can ramp up services quickly enough to be an effective provider?

Another really important question on this same line is why isn’t this weakness in the CCHS proposal reflected in the scores given by the 6 member ad-hoc purchasing panel? The RFP itself expressly states that the personnel must be in place. Here’s the section from page 15 of the RFP:

That this weakness in the CCHS proposal isn’t reflected in the scores, nor addressed in any official statement from the Shelby County Government, raises many questions about the fairness of the process. This is something that all the evaluators need to account for, as it is listed as a requirement, not a goal.

On Wednesday at 9:45 am the Health and Hospitals Committee will take this issue up again. As of right now there’s 1 hour scheduled for the discussion, though I feel certain that it will last much longer than that. I hope that the Commissioners give the issues I’ve raised over the past several posts a serious look. The lives of thousands of people in Shelby County are depending on them to exercise their oversight over the Administration, and get real answers.

Considering the challenges we already have in Shelby County with poverty, infant mortality and teen pregnancy, it hardly seems like a time to politicize a process that will directly impact some of the most at risk individuals in our community.

We’ll see on Wednesday.

Thanks again for reading.

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