By Haylee Pence
PIQUA – By the end of this year, the Piqua Health Department will be successfully merged with the Miami County Public Health Department located in Troy. Starting in January 2022, all services will be provided by the Miami County Public Health.
This merger was brought on by changes in the requirements for city health departments from the state that was a part of the state budget bill in July of this year. One of the changes involved the city health departments to conduct a feasibility study to determine if the services would be more beneficial if they were merged to a county department if the city department served a population under 50,000 individuals.
Previous to this bill, the state was mandating that all health departments had to obtain accreditation, which according to Amy Welker, director of the Health and Sanitation Department in Piqua, the process to accreditation would be “lengthy” and “more costly” due to the need of additional staffing.
These two issues encouraged the city and county to decide to merge the Piqua Health Department with Miami County Public Health.
For the residents of Piqua who utilized the Piqua Health Department, there will be a slight adjustment to where the services will be provided once the merger is finished. Welker assures the residents “won’t notice the difference” and is confident in Miami County Public Health in serving the community. One difference in the department’s services is obtaining birth or death records. The advantage to Miami County Public Health providing this service is that this department can process these requests over the phone and mail the certificates because they can accept credit cards over the phone.
While the Piqua Health Department is merging, the Sanitation Department will remain and the Parks Department will be moved there. The staff that will remain is “excited” to be able to handle new responsibilities that come with the addition of the Parks Department.
Welker says, “The merger will be seamless,” and “the Miami County Public Health Department will be excellent at providing services to the community.”
