The Chautauqua County Department of Health is looking at doing some restructuring of some of its staff.

During the county Board of Health meeting, Interim Health Director Dr. Michael Faulk discussed some staffing updates.

He shared that Lacey Wilson is the new deputy public health director. Faulk said she is a Chautauqua County native, a registered dietitian and nutritionist, has a Masters degree in Public Health, and has more than 10 years of experience working in public health. The last three years, she’s worked for the Office for the Aging services, as well as served as a grant manager for Chautauqua Adult Day Services. She’s also worked as a nutrition consultant for a number of organizations, including the National Football League.

Faulk said they have 17 unfilled positions in the county Health Department, seven of which are nursing positions.

He noted that nurse positions, in general, are difficult to fill. “We have specific challenges to nursing recruitment and retention. We just lost another nurse in the jail. Keep in mind, the jail services and health services are mandated by the state, so we are working very closely with Human Resources and the sheriff to find some solutions to provide the correctional health nurses a little bit of extra incentive for hazard pay,” Faulk said.

For next year’s budget he is tentatively removing four positions from his department. The positions include the epidemiology manager, a homemaker position, and two nurse positions, which were initially added during the COVID-19 pandemic.

Faulk said they are also recruiting for a sixth coroner. The county’s coroners attend 400 deaths annually and there’s a lot of administrative work required.

One of the biggest problems they have is cold storage for the bodies of those who have past. “There’s very limited cold storage facilities in Chautauqua County. One of our hospitals doesn’t have any. Our two larger hospitals have very limited space. We have at times, a need for cold storage,” Faulk said.

Because of this, they are exploring a mobile cold storage unit, which would be purchased with American Rescue Plan Act funds, which the county received from the federal government following the COVID-19 pandemic.