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DHHR Secretary Crouch pushes back on reorganization criticisms  

CHARLESTON — Bill Crouch, cabinet secretary for the West Virginia Department of Health and Human Resources, defended changes the department announced this week, saying re-organizing DHHR will help the agency.  

“I think there is going to be criticism regardless of what I do at this point,” Crouch said Wednesday morning during Gov. Jim Justice’s COVID-19 virtual briefing with reporters from the State Capitol Building. “DHHR is under a microscope here. We do a lot of good things every day for a huge number of people in this state.”  

Earlier Wednesday, DHHR announced a new reporting structure for staff who work in Finance, Management Information Services, Human Resources Management and Purchasing within DHHR’s bureaus. Instead of reporting to their bureau commissioners, those employees will report directly to Chief Financial Officer Tara Buckner, Chief Information Officer Shaun Charles, Office of Administration Director Warren Keefer, and Office of Human Resources Management Director Angie Ferris.  

DHHR is also implementing a hiring freeze on non-critical personnel, requiring hiring requests receive initial approvals by the department’s three new deputy secretaries, signed off on by the Office of Human Resources Management, with final approval from Crouch.  

DHHR announced Tuesday that Christina Mullins, the commissioner for DHHR’s Bureau for Behavioral Health, will become the new deputy secretary of Mental Health and Substance Use Disorders overseeing the Bureau for Behavioral Health and the Office of Drug Control Policy. Cammie Chapman, DHHR’s associate general counsel, was appointed Monday as the newly created deputy secretary of Child and Adult Services, overseeing DHHR’s Bureau for Child Support and Bureau for Social Services.  

The remaining position to be filled is deputy secretary for Access and Eligibility who will oversee the bureaus for Family Assistance and Medical Services. The new positions, as well as the organizational chart changes, are among several recommendations by the McChrystal Group in their organizational assessment and strategic plan for DHHR released earlier this month.  

Justice commissioned a top-to-bottom review of DHHR in April after vetoing a bill passed by the West Virginia Legislature earlier this year that would have split DHHR into two separate departments. The McChrystal Group report, a Virginia-based management consulting company, won a bid for the organizational assessment and strategic plan at a cost of more than $1 million. After a 17-week review, the Governor’s Office released the McChrystal Group report at the beginning of November.  

“There’s been problems with DHHR for decades and decades and decades and decades,” Justice said. “We got the best of the best to come in here and absolutely do us a top-to-bottom evaluation of DHHR in every way and give us recommendations. They did so, and we’re following those recommendations. We’ll make it better. We won’t make it perfect, but we’ll make it better.”  

But the report has come under fire from lawmakers who believe it wasn’t worth the cost and believe the changes the McChrystal Group recommends will not address the systemic problems within DHHR, including severe shortages in key staff within Child Protective Services. The state has repeatedly ranked poorly on several key healthcare metrics, including having one of the worst drug overdose rates in the nation and one of the highest per capita number of children in foster care.  

“I’d like to focus on the good stuff. I know a lot of people want to focus on other areas they think are failures,” Crouch said. “We’re focused on those issues … child welfare and the (substance abuse disorder) problem have been priorities for us. The outcomes we expect are going to get better.”  

Crouch pointed to increases in salary for CPS workers as high as 33 percent, adding retention bonuses and sign-on bonuses, and increasing the CPS workforce by 184 employees. Crouch said the department has worked on efforts to get more people into substance use treatment instead of incarceration and the creation of quick response teams.  

“We’ve done a huge number of things in the state to impact these issues, but we have to do more,” Crouch said. “We’re putting the right people in the right positions to see better outcomes. That’s the goal here. Whether you have one department or whether the department would have been split into two, you’re going to have two departments doing the same thing.” 

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