WHEELING — The effort to separate Project HOPE (Homeless Outreach Partnership Effort) from under the umbrella of the Wheeling-Ohio County Health Department has been shelved.

For several months late last year and early this year, a push to remove the local street medicine program from under the auspices of the health department had appeared to be picking up traction. Several meetings were held about the proposal, and the Wheeling-Ohio County Board of Health even shared detailed financial information about the program with Catholic Charities, one of the nonprofit agencies being eyed as a possible partner.

This month, however, officials stated that no agreement had been reached with any local nonprofit organization to take on the duties associated with Project HOPE’s operations.

“Right now that is on a hold,” Dr. William Mercer said. “We’re kind of evaluating the situation. It’s still a possibility. But right now, we’ve kind of just put that on hold.”

Mercer and medical director Chrystal Bauer founded Project HOPE in 2013.

The outreach program is a collaboration of medical, nursing, social work, pastoral care and other health care professionals who serve together on the street and in homeless shelters in Wheeling. They provide basic medical care, food, water, clothing, follow-up appointments and information on agencies and services.

“Our goal is to bridge our homeless to primary care,” Mercer said. “A lot of our. people don’t want to go to the ER, so we do some acute problems. But we have a whole group of volunteers – physicians, physician assistance, nurse practitioners, nurses … we have a full component of people.”

The team not only makes regular visits to the homeless encampment along Wheeling Creek – typically on Saturdays, but they also respond to various health needs of the homeless community and the agencies that work with the unhoused population in Wheeling.

“We get called pretty much every day about a problem, whether it’s at Catholic Charities, the Soup Kitchen, one of the high rises,” Mercer noted. “It’s not just the camp. It’s a lot.”

The workload had been getting so heavy that those involved with Project HOPE felt that the program had “outgrown” the health department and was in need of taking on more full-time staff members.

“It’s not that we weren’t happy with the health department,” Mercer explained. “Dealing with the government sometimes, there’s some restrictions. And we felt that we kind of just outgrew it. We felt we needed to be a little bit more independent.”

Mercer previously served as the health officer for the Wheeling-Ohio County Health Department. That role is now performed by Dr. William Przbysz, who also remains heavily involved with Project HOPE’s services, along with other medical professionals that are able to write prescriptions and provide medical treatment to those in need.

Because Project HOPE is expected to remain a program operated under the Wheeling-Ohio County Health Department for the foreseeable future, Mercer had requested that he be permitted to have more control over the program.

That proposal was discussed by Wheeling-Ohio County Health Board Chairman Dr. John Holloway, fellow board member Elisabeth Slater and Health Administrator Howard Gamble this summer. Officials indicated that because of the health department’s table of organization and standard operating protocols, the proper procedure would dictate that the health administrator continue to be in charge of the program.

During this month’s board of health meeting, Holloway made note of this request regarding Project HOPE.

“Dr. Mercer approached me about wanting to be in charge of Project HOPE, including financially and with personnel,” Holloway said. “I talked with Howard and Libby about it, and then Libby and I talked with Dr. Mercer about it. From my standpoint, it’s just not feasible because Howard is the administrator. The administrator of the board of health is going to be also in charge of administering anything about Project HOPE. So it’s going to be up to the administrator to decide about personnel and financial decisions.”

Holloway indicated that the board should not be in a position to supersede this chain of command.

“My perspective as being a member of this board – and as being a member of any board – is that our responsibility is to protect the fiduciary element of what we’re serving and to hire and fire the CEO or administrator,” he said. “Other than that, it’s a very slippery slope once the board starts getting into making personnel decisions and things such as that.

“It isn’t a personal thing – as far as because it’s Howard or it’s Dr. Mercer or anyone else – it’s just the principle of: this is our organization and this is how we have it set up, and the administrator oversees everything, which includes Project HOPE.”

Holloway noted at the meeting that he will be serving his final term on the board of health. He accepted the nomination to continue serving as chairman of the board, but only for this fiscal year.