The Board of Supervisors Tuesday is slated to approve a bevy of fee hikes tied to Riverside County Department of Public Health services, under a fee schedule revised to reflect inflation-driven impacts to the agency.
The public hearing on Tuesday will follow one from early March in which the board tentatively signed off on the proposed adjustments.
Department of Public Health Director Kim Saruwatari said the Auditor-Controller’s Office scrutinized the proposal and determined the new rates would be “equitable and reasonable to recover the cost of providing services.”
“These new and revised public health program fees are necessary to meet the on-going operational and maintenance costs of providing public health program services to Riverside County residents,” according to an agency statement posted to the board’s agenda.
In a few instances, fees have been put forward where none existed previously. For the department’s “mobile team vaccines” service, the cost of administering a Gardisil human papillomavirus 9 variant inoculation would go from zero to $330. Similarly, to receive the Boostrix TDAP vaccine via a mobile clinic would cost $50, where there was no charge before. Any mobile vaccination clinic service would additionally include administration fees — ranging from $2 to $90, depending on economic hardship — which haven’t been charged in the past.
To obtain a “dog importation health certificate,” the department would in the future charge $26 for the service. There was previously no cost attached to the certificate.
A number of laboratory processing fees are set to be increased. A tuberculosis culture analysis would go from $20 to $50, while a basic “culture for identification” would jump from $17 to $50. An HIV antibody screening would go from $28 to $36.12, and the cost of an HIV-1 and HIV-2 genus confirmation would be raised from $46 to $58.06.
The new up-front cost for procuring any medical documents loaded onto a CD, such as x-rays and CT scans, would be $25. In the past, this has been a complimentary service provided by the department.
Health insurance providers, including government-subsidized Medi-Cal, would likely pick up many of the new expenses, though co-pay costs were unknown.