To see just how tremendous a year 2014 was for the Van Buren/Cass District Health Department, one simply needs to witness the activity occurring upstairs in downtown’s newest complex.

The department’s dental operations in both Dowagiac and Cassopolis were consolidated into one central location last fall, in the second floor of the recently built James E. Snow Professional Building. The state of the art facility has proven in just a short amount of time to be a tremendous asset for the health department’s burgeoning dentistry program, said Administrator Jeff Elliott.

“Hopefully we can get some more parking down there,” Elliott said.

The Dowagiac dentist office was just one of several highlights the administrator shared with the members of the Cass County Board of Commissioners during their meeting Thursday evening in Cassopolis.

Elliott was there to deliver his annual report on the status of the dual-county health department, where he discussed some of the organization’s achievements over the last 12 months.

One the main areas the department has seen growth recently is with its personnel. Last year, the administration hired 11 new employees, with another 11 brought on board over the last several months, Elliot said. The additional labor is needed to help staff the department’s growing dental, substance abuse and other health programs, the administrator added.

“We’re adding staff,” Elliot said. “It doesn’t come from the county coffers. It actually comes from the grants that we write. Collectively, I write a lot of grants, and those grants fund everything we’re doing in the community.”

Funds from the county make up only two percent of the department’s annual revenue, Elliot said.

The administration also worked to improve conditions for workers across the board last year as well. Besides implementing a new employment plan that provided salary increases for new and current staff, the department also enacted a new health insurance program that reduced premiums by 17.4 percent, Elliot said.

“The utilization rate within our program was less than 9 percent last year,” he said. “That’s unbelievable. That national average is 52 percent.”

The largest source of growth over the last several years has been with the dental program, which continued last year, Elliot said. The department has went from having four working spaces for dental work to 24 across the two counties as of today, Elliot said.

“We went from one or two dentists that were retired and wanted to slow down to having an aggressive staff,” he added. “We have 14 dentists right now, with two more who are going to join us from the University of Michigan and the University of Detroit.”

The administrator closed his remarks by mentioning that the National Association of County and City Health Officials had recognized the Van Buren/Cass District Health Department for its emergency planning and preparedness. The department is one of 23 others throughout the nation to receive the distinction, and the only from Michigan, Elliot said.

“This is a little health department,” Elliot said. “I was very proud of our staff for putting this [plan] together.”