Kent Tabbed as Bay County Health Director

Doug Kent, executive director of the Gulf County Health Department the past 12 years, has been appointed by Gov. Charlie Crist to the same position in Bay County.

The decision is pending a vote of the Board of County Commissioners in Bay County, which is expected at next Tuesday’s meeting.

The position is a state appointment and last week Secretary of the Florida Department of Health, Dr. Viamonte Ros, and Crist signed off on the appointment. Kent was one of two finalists for the job whose names had been forwarded to Viamonte Ros for consideration.

“A lot of people don’t realize, but I am an appointee of the governor,” Kent said. “I work for the Secretary of Health and she works for the governor. I’m the last person standing it looks like.”

Kent takes an impressive resume and record of achievement to Bay County, which is actually akin to home, Kent said. He spent much of his young life in Bay County, has many relatives who live there and worked for a time with the Bay County Health Department’s environmental sciences division.

“I’m impressed and I think he will be a good guy,” Bay County Commissioner Jerry Girvin told the Panama City News Herald. “We need someone to go in there and say, ‘Here is the game plan and here is how we are going to get there.’”

Girvin was on the hiring committee that interviewed candidates for the health department job. Kent said he would be meeting with each commissioner individually in the coming days.

Kent has been a public employee for 37 years, including a stint with the Gulf County Board of County Commissioners, serving as county administrator and supervising the Mosquito Control Department, prior to becoming the county’s health director in 1998.

That was the year the old Smurfit-Stone paper mill was permanently closed and a year of transition for health care in Gulf County, with two prominent family care physicians retiring and Gulf Pines Hospital teetering under debt and an aged facility.

Kent inherited health department facilities in Port St. Joe and Wewahitchka that were built in the 1950’s and his workforce was nine-12 employees.

Today, Port St. Joe and Wewahitchka have new health department facilities and the health department’s workforce is 85.

“It was like starting in the Stone Age,” Kent said with a chuckle. “What you wanted, you had to develop on your own. There was not much health care going other than the quality care provided by a few physicians in the community.”

The growth of the past 12 years has been astounding.

“I changed the model on them,” Kent laughed. “I said we are going to run this as a business and our motto is going to be 100 percent access and zero disparities. The access is there. I am still working on the disparities.”

During his tenure as county health director Kent fostered in dental facilities at each end of he county. The county’s first digital x-ray machine arrived at the health department. Kent helped start mental health services and the health department now serves the county jail.

A women’s center was established – “I am real proud of that” – and a program was established to provide people of need to purchase medicines on a sliding-fee scale.

Kent also secured federal funds to establish St. Joseph Care Clinic, a Federally Qualified Community Health Center (FQHC).

“This community has been very good to me and I hope I have been good to the community,” Kent said. “If you don’t have heart for the community, how can you help the community? I believe in this job. It is vital for the community.”

Kent was also the chairman of the local board that oversaw the recruitment of Sacred Heart Health Systems to the county, with a new hospital set to open on March 15.

The Gulf County Board of County Commissioners passed a half-cent sales tax four years ago to help defray the costs of treating the indigent or uninsured at the new hospital.

“It’s the only time I’ve seen people stand up and clap for a half-cent sales tax,” Kent said. “Commissioners knew it was the right thing to do and it passed with a super-majority vote.”

Kent’s last day in Gulf County would be Feb. 28. He would be taking March off and would begin work in Bay County on April 2, pending the commission vote Tuesday.

“I’ll be leaving great people,” Kent said. “I know their names, I know their families, I know their friends. I know the illnesses that have afflicted family members and watched them have to bury some of them. You take that with you.

“I feel challenged but I also feel excited. I feel I’ve brought the health department a long way and I’m not ready to retire. I know there are some problems (in Bay County’s health department) but if you didn’t have problems you would not need a leader. That’s my job.”