Montgomery County spends 20 percent more on county health department salaries than neighboring counties, but residents are not nearly as healthy as the residents in those counties, a new study shows.
Per capita spending on county health care is nearly double the state average, the report by the Montgomery County Taxpayers League also reveals, and local funding of the department is the highest among nearby counties in Maryland and Virginia, with 70 percent of the county Department of Health and Human Services’ funding coming from local taxpayers.
Health and Human Services is the third largest county department and has an annual operating budget of about $250 million.
The average Health and Human Services salary in Montgomery County is $71,000, compared to $58,000 in Fairfax County, which is considered a peer to Montgomery in terms of community health indicators, and $55,000 in Howard County.
Montgomery County spends about $68 per capita on health care, compared with the state average of $38.13 and the national median of $33.71, the report reveals.
Health department employees in most counties in Maryland are paid using the state’s pay scale, which is significantly lower than Montgomery’s, explained Gordon Brenne, a member of the Taxpayers League’s board of directors. Howard County is among a small number of counties using a hybrid of county and state pay scales.
Though the county fared better on health outcomes than Prince George’s and Baltimore counties — which have higher poverty rates, lower rates of insurance and older residents — Montgomery was worse than both Fairfax and Howard in areas like the number of premature births, low birth weights and high blood pressure, according to the report.
The findings demonstrate that the quality of residents’ health is determined by factors like age, poverty level and whether the residents are insured, not by how much money the county spends on salaries, said Brenne. “Montgomery County offers a range of services above and beyond the minimum core services required by the state,” he said.
But comparing Montgomery with the other counties is not an apples to apples comparison, said county HHS Director Uma Ahluwalia.
“The communities are not exactly the same. Howard County does not look like Montgomery County,” she said. “It’s a little simplistic to say, ‘They pay 20-percent less and they’re doing better.'”
Montgomery residents rated second in the state behind Howard County residents in many health categories, she said.
