Mission Statement

The Department of Health and Human Services (DHHS) assures delivery of a full array of services to address the somatic and behavioral health, economic and housing security, and other emergent needs of Montgomery County residents. To achieve this, the Department (directly and/or via a network of community partners) develops and implements policies, procedures, programs, and services that: 1) offer customer-focused direct care and supports; 2) maximize financial and staffing resources to deliver services through effective management, coordination, and pursuit of strategic funding opportunities; 3) pilot and evaluate innovative approaches to service delivery and systems integration; and 4) develop, enhance, and maintain a broad network of community-based organizations, public agencies, and private entities to promote and sustain partnerships which increase the availability of needed services.

Budget Overview

The total approved FY25 Operating Budget for the Department of Health and Human Services is $510,954,898, an increase of $34,544,826 or 7.25 percent from the FY24 Approved Budget of $476,410,072. Personnel Costs comprise 49.54 percent of the budget for 1,793 full-time position(s) and 318 part-time position(s), and a total of 2,002.27 FTEs. Total FTEs may include seasonal or temporary positions and may also reflect workforce charged to or from other departments or funds. Operating Expenses account for the remaining 50.46 percent of the FY25 budget.

County Priority Outcomes

While this program area supports all eight of the County Result Areas, the following are emphasized:

• Thriving Youth and Families
• A Greener County
• An Affordable, Welcoming County for a Lifetime
• Safe Neighborhoods
• Effective, Sustainable Government

Program Performance Measures

Performance measures for this department are included below (where applicable), with multi-program measures displayed at the front of this section and program-specific measures shown with the relevant program. The FY24 estimates reflect funding based on the FY24 approved budget. The FY25 and FY26 figures are performance targets based on the FY25 approved budget and funding for comparable service levels in FY26.

Initiatives

• Shifts the focus of the Services to End and Prevent Homelessness (SEPH) service area toward prevention services and away from distribution of Federal funding for emergency rental assistance, as prevention services are more cost effective than shelters or motels. The Federal Emergency Rental Assistance Program (eRAP), which began during the COVID-19 pandemic, ends in FY24. Funding of almost $842,000 is recommended in FY25 for a team within DHHS to work directly with households to help them stay housed.
• Adds funding of $1,900,000 to upgrade the existing enterprise Integrated Case Management system (eICM).
• Provides approximately $3.2 million to support various school health initiatives, including approximately $1.3 million to annualize new school health room staff in community schools, $908,000 for seven new community schools that are expected to be designated in FY25, $580,000 for the opening of a School Based Health Center at South Lake Elementary School, and almost $385,000 to cover inflation in school based health center contracts.

• Provides $1.5 million general funds to replace an ending Federal grant to continue Mobile Crisis Outreach Team (MCOT) services and expand capacity from five to seven teams. MCOTs are a crucial intervention for individuals with behavioral health issues and prevent unnecessary hospitalizations, interactions with law enforcement, and incarcerations.

• Expands capacity in the dental program to meet increased demand. There are over 750 youth and 450 adults waitlisted for DHHS' dental services. In a promising development for dental care access, Medicaid has recently expanded dental care eligibility to adults ages 19-59, a population that did not previously have access to Medicaid dental coverage. This $600,000 expansion provides essential dental care to the County's most vulnerable residents while offsetting costs with newly available Medicaid revenues. With additional staff, the dental program will be able to reduce its waitlists and improve access to dental services through the Mobile Health Clinic.

• Enhances supplemental funding for reimbursements to critical providers, including $697,000 for a 3% increase to the Developmental Disability Provider Supplement and the Adult Medical Day Care Provider Supplement. In addition, $200,144 is added to the Adult Medical Day Provider Supplement to support two new providers in the County.

Innovations and Productivity Improvements

• DHHS' enterprise Integrated Case Managment (eICM) Modernization system project updates the current DHHS eICM system for improved functionality, support, and cybersecurity. The contractor has been meeting with stakeholders to refine requirements and consolidate an inventory of all enterprise-wide reports applicable across DHHS service areas. In parallel, the contractor has started to design and prototype the new application to obtain early user feedback. The goal is to complete design and prototyping by mid-May 2024 and then start the build phase of the project.
• eICM includes an interface with the Maryland Department of Health CARES system. The CARES system was replaced by the MD THINK Eligibility and Enrollment (E&E) system at the end of 2021. The conversion from CARES to E&E was supposed to be an "as is" conversion but the eICM support team discovered numerous issues with the data sent by E&E. Over the course of the previous year, a significant collaborative effort between the E&E and eICM teams resolved all the data issues. This work involved numerous rounds of requesting data, testing, and then requesting changes in the E&E system to resolve the issues identified in testing.
• QLESS is a lobby management system that was implemented in DHHS' heavily trafficked locations in 2017. The initial implementation focused on serving some programs at some locations. Based on the success of this system in helping programs manage the lobbies, the Department has expanded to nine locations over the past year. Additional functionalities implemented or planned in FY24 include the ability to track service request volumes, virtually queue so clients no longer need to physically enter DHHS spaces, tracking clients by location, enabling individuals to view their place in a queue for services, working with MC311 to queue individuals requesting Office of Eligibility and Support Services (OESS) assistance, installing commercial displays that can easily change content to not only show QLESS information but other HHS priority information for customers, and replacing kiosks at all locations with larger screens for easier sign-in access for customers.
• Licensure and Regulatory (L&R) Services selected the commercial CivicGov software to process applications, receive payment, better communicate with businesses, and combine multiple databases. DHHS Information Technology (IT), L&R, and the vendor have been working with County stakeholders to implement the software and expect to "Go Live" by the end of March 2024. CivicGov will also make processing the applications and payments easier for the County and the almost 4,400 constituents or businesses that will use CivicGov.
• The DHHS Community Connect Application will improve the client experience and increase the efficiency of Case Workers in providing benefits and services to the community, such as reduced foot traffic, increased flexibility, improved document sharing, reduced application intake time, application tracking, screening for other needs, and easier reporting of changes. DHHS is currently in user acceptance and community testing and expects to "Go Live" with the first two phases of implementation in the fourth quarter of FY24. In FY25, the focus will be on development of the provider portal module of the platform which will be aimed at providing improved invoicing and transactions processing related to customer benefits approved by the County.
• DHHS Information Technology team completed the Hyper-Converged Infrastructure (HCI) system project. All HHS applications that were at their end of life for maintenance support were successfully transferred to this newer, more efficient, and secure hardware.
• The Services to End and Prevent Homelessness (SEPH) division worked with DHHS Information Technology to implement additional updates to the online application system for COVID Rent Relief and emergency Rental Assistance Program (CRR and eRAP). FY24 updates included creating duplicate applications to support households with additional funds, updating the reporting capability to more easily respond to data requests, and enhancing data validation and alerts for required fields to improve the accuracy of the applications.