MnPrairie receives good audit, grapples with rising health insurance costs

Oct. 18--WASECA -- The Minnesota Prairie County Alliance, a three-county human services collaborative, was found to be doing well by a state audit of its home and community-based services.

Jane Hardwick, executive director of MnPrairie, presented an update on the human services agency at the Waseca County Board of Commissioners meeting.

"They had a couple of primary recommendations around the need for us to work more extensively with communities to extend the array of services for the community -- this is especially for long-term care services," Hardwick said.

MnPrairie was launched in January 2015 to merge the human services departments in Waseca, Steele and Dodge counties. The goal was to eliminate duplication of administrative services and improve response time as the complexity of human services increased.

There were many complaints about the agency throughout its first year and a half, including issues with services provided and employee turnover. Waseca County's commissioners even discussed possibly leaving the agreement in November 2016 but decided to stay.

Waseca County Administrator Jessica Beyer said in September that MnPrairie seems to be doing better as the agency gets established.

The MnPrairie preliminary levy for 2018 was set at about $9.7 million. The cost is shared between all three counties.

Hardwick said the state audit results showed the agency could better handle community needs and manage risks than individual counties might. Hardwick also said that MnPrairie has a 94 percent staff retention. There are five open positions across the agency.

This year, the agency has seen increased caseloads from children that need out-of-home placement and has had trouble finding enough staff to handle the counties' long-term care health care needs, Hardwick said. MnPrairie also faces increasing employee health insurance costs that aren't yet finalized but factored into its levy.

"We are seeing an increased proportion of out-of-home placement cases involved in drug use," Hardwick said, adding that part of the increase could also be recently updated screening guidelines from the state that dictate how MnPrairie proceeds with each case.

Charity Floen, Prairie adult and disability services manager, said MnPrairie has been able to standardize a lot of operations between the three counties, and having more people lets staff specialize more.

"Often, in a smaller agency, if you have, for example, a maternity leave where someone is gone for 12 weeks, it can be difficult to get that position's duties covered," Floen said. "But here, someone from another county could step in and help. We've got some more depth on the bench now."

MnPrairie received $25,000 this year as a bonus from the federal government for its Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program performance. The money was used to purchase touch screen computer systems that are used to communicate between the three county offices, Hardwick said.

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