A report from the Wisconsin Department of Health Services raises new questions about the Milwaukee Health Department’s Childhood Lead Poisoning Prevention Program.
The report, released to the public on Monday, validated some of the concerns with the city’s handling of blood lead levels in children that were raised by the health department’s own review earlier this year.
According to the Department of Health Services, those include insufficient policies and procedures to assure appropriate program administration, insufficient documentation and record-keeping, and failure to provide required interventions for all children identified with elevated blood lead levels.
But the report reads, “DHS also found program deficiencies not discussed in the Milwaukee Health Department’s self-assessment report,” which include a failure to comply with state statutes.
DHS examined 108 cases of elevated blood lead levels in children reported during the time frame of January 1, 2012 – December 31, 2017.
Over the course of that time, some of those cases were declared closed by public health nurses.
But according to the DHS report, “91% of cases closed to public health nurse case management (64 of 70) did not meet the state minimum blood lead level criteria for case closure.”
The DHS report also alleges the health department’s policies and procedures were altered “significantly in mid-2016.
The new policies did not adhere to state statute that requires environmental investigations for children found to have elevated levels of lead in their blood.
Because of that, 12 children “beginning around June 1, 2016, were no longer provided the environmental investigations and public health nurse case management required for a child with an identified elevated blood level,” the report reads.
Ald. Michael Murphy said he wants to know what occurred in 2016 to prompt the shift in policy.
“This adds more meat, perhaps, to the bones indicating how bad the health department mismanaged this important issue,” Murphy said.
“This is shocking. It should not have occurred,” Murphy said. “This is not complicated. You have a state statute, a requirement to follow, and somehow in their department, they lost sight of that.”
The DHS calls on the Milwaukee Health Department to present a comprehensive plan of correction to the state by the end of June.
“Once received, DHS will review and provide feedback and any assistance needed to correct or improve the plan for final approval,” the report reads.
