One of the biggest irony of Dr. Jennifer Tinguely’s raise is that there are probably people she serves at Falls Community Health (FCH) that don’t even make that in a year. She went from $215K to $227K in one year. She is the highest paid city employee . . . she runs a clinic.
Is she a bad doctor or bad person? I highly doubt it. Anyone who would dedicate themselves to helping people with their medical needs should be commended. But as a city employee, I just don’t think she is needed.
As I have pointed out in the past when I was researching regional director pay, I couldn’t find any city in our region that had a CMO. Now some of the municipalities like Des Moines overlap with the county services, so it may be hidden somewhere else. But Lincoln, Omaha, Fargo and Des Moines didn’t have one. Why is this? Because I think a lot of these communities depend on Non-Profits to provide that care with Federal Assistance.
So what about the justification of her raise? The health department had 121 employees in 2017, 122 in 2018 and in 2019 they have 116, not sure how many work at FCH. Also, with so many medical staff members including 3 full-time dentists, why does the center need an MD as director? Jill Franken, the Health director who makes $163K a year could easily manage the facility. Let’s face it, FCH is a ‘clinic’. If anything serious arrises you would refer a patient to a specialist or the emergency room at one of our many healthcare facilities in Sioux Falls. The good doctor isn’t curing cancer. In fact, they basically help with minor afflictions, pulling bad teeth, and testing for the ‘itchy scratchy’.
Do I think it is a good idea to have a ‘doctor’ on staff. Yes. But you could easily contract a family doctor to come in a couple times a week to see certain patients. A nurse practitioner could easily handle most patients. FCH needs an administrator, not a MD running the joint.