Orange County Health Department Releases Annual Report

The Orange County Health Department released its annual report to the public on Wednesday.

Dr. Colleen Bridger, the health director of the facility, cited a number of trends in the data gleaned from the report.

“The first is that, overall, we continue to have really high satisfaction among clients who use health services,” stated Bridger.

According to the report, the satisfaction rate of medical patients at the facility in 2016 was 89 percent.

Bridger also brought attention to rising employee satisfaction rates as a second major trend.

“That’s really neat to see both clients and employees being highly satisfied with health department programs and services.”

The report claims that 90 percent of employees at the facility attested to getting satisfaction from their jobs every week.

The third trend outlined by Bridger is the increasing number of services that the facility provides for the community.

“We were fortunate enough, two years ago, to expand our dental clinic,” noted Bridger. “We doubled the number of dental teams that we have.”

According to the report, the number of primary care consults performed at the facility decreased in 2016 by over 400.

Bridger speculated that the decrease may be associated with the prevalence of the federal health insurance marketplace.

“Our theory is that as more and more people were able to get insurance through the marketplace, they had less need for safety net primary care services.”

The report also presents data on mandatory health screenings for refugees, with nearly 160 completed at the facility in 2016.

“It’s a comprehensive assessment of their immunization status of any sort of communicable disease risk,” explained Bridger. “[Refugees] have to have this completed shortly after their arrival to their host community.”

Among the health concerns outlined by Bridger, sexually transmitted infections were foremost.

“We are seeing an increase in syphilis in gonorrhea, both in Orange County and in the southern United States.”

Bridger also praised a syringe exchange program established at the facility to address problems that arise from injection drug use.

“We now can give out clean syringes to anybody who comes to the health department who says that they would like it, and we did that in response to an increase in the number of people with hepatitis C.”

The report states that used syringe collection bins have been emptied twice since April of 2016.