Oneida County reports low turnover rates

Oneida County’s personnel ledger has been steady as she goes in 2025, with a relatively high employee retention rate and a low turnover rate, even as the county’s Human Services Department sought approval for additional limited-term employee hours to address continuing problems with its electronic health records system.

From mid-October through mid-November, the county’s personnel department reported hiring eight employees across several departments: a solid waste operator, two highway operators, two social workers in Human Services, a cleaning technician in Buildings & Grounds, a computer technician in Information Technology Services, and the county’s newly appointed corporation counsel.

The turnover rate was comparatively low. The county reported that two employees ended employment in October, resulting in a turnover rate of 0.6 percent. Turnover in September was 1.5 percent (five employees), and, in August, 2.5 percent (eight employees). The year-to-date turnover average stands at 1.7 percent. 

Annual employee retention — defined as employees who began the year with the county and remain employed — was 86.4 percent year-to-date compared to 92 percent in 2024.

Those are pretty good numbers. A minimum 90-percent retention rate is the goal for most employers. For Oneida County, while 2025 is down from 2024 and slightly below the 90 percent benchmark, the 1.7 percent turnover rate is excellent, so, overall, the numbers are good.

The reasons for the vacancies varied. The county reported that 38.46 percent of vacancies resulted from employees leaving for “better pay, benefits, or duties,” while 17.31 percent resigned because they didn’t like their job. Another 17.31 percent retired, 13.46 percent resigned because they could not perform job duties or left in lieu of termination, 9.62 percent were terminated, and 3.84 percent of vacancies were due to death.

As of Nov. 13, the county listed 15 vacant positions.

Human Services requests

Those general personnel figures served as the backdrop for a discussion at the county’s Nov. 19 executive committee meeting, where Human Services department officials sought approval for additional LTE (limited-term employee) hours to help navigate ongoing challenges with the county’s electronic health record (EHR) and electronic medical record (EMR) software, known as Netsmart.

In a memo to the executive committee, Human Services department director Beth Hoerchler said the department was having significant issues with the Netsmart EHR/EMR software at the Timber Drive location. It is an inherited issue that migrated from the now-defunct Human Service Center to the Human Services department during the county’s consolidation of agencies and services.

“A formal complaint was filed with the company requesting that they address the issues with reporting functions, forms, and billing processes and provide training to staff so that the department can fully and correctly utilize the system,” Hoerchler wrote.

Hoerchler reported that a former employee of the Human Service Center had been working as an LTE over the last year to assist the department with troubleshooting issues in the system and also training staff in workarounds or creating additional tasks to track data that Netsmart should be able to provide.

The LTE position was approved by the Labor Relations & Employee Services Committee (LRES), and the committee also approved an extension. However, Hoerchler wrote, due to an oversight, the hourly maximum and timeframe were exceeded. 

“She was approved for up to 610 hours,” Hoerchler wrote. “She has worked 657.70 hours as of 10/31/25. As noted below, the department did have vacancy dollars to cover the cost of the additional hours.”

In sum, Hoerchler wrote, Human Services was requesting approval to continue the LTE position on an as-needed basis, not to exceed 800 hours. 

“Dependent on the outcome of the complaint and the ability of the department to get issues in the system resolved, the department may request LRES approve additional hours in 2026 not to exceed 450,” she wrote. “The department will ensure that sufficient vacancy dollars are available for the position prior to requesting them from LRES.”

Savings from vacancies this year totaled $29,065.23, while LTE costs through October 31 were $18,429.81. Additional requested time would cost $2,967.22, bringing total LTE costs to $21,397.03.

It’s been a bit

At the meeting, Hoerchler said significant challenges with the Netsmart system were longstanding.

“We have an electronic health record, electronic medical record system over at the Timber Drive location called Netsmart,” she said. “It has — since 2016 when it was implemented — given us a lot of issues.”

Hoerchler said the LTE helping out was a former Human Service Center employee who had worked through the system “quite a bit while she was employed there” and had agreed to return to offer short-term assistance.

“She was able to get data reports out and come up with workarounds in this system,” she said. 

As for the complaint she had lodged, which she said was in the form of a strongly worded letter, Hoerchler said those don’t usually get very far, but, surprisingly, the company had responded, indicating it would be willing to work with the county to resolve the issues.

“But really we need … assistance until we can get a resolution to our complaint,” she said, adding more detail to the request. “So we’re requesting that she be approved for up to 800 hours, so the hours that she’s already completed, plus roughly 130 more until the end of the year. And then potentially, depending on how long this issue goes, we may need some additional hours in 2026.”

Committee members didn’t seem to have any specific problem with the request itself, but they did question its financial and procedural context.

County board chairman and committee member Scott Holewinski asked about additional benefits the county might have to pay when an employee exceeds working a certain number of hours, but Hoerchler and Human Services Department head of finance Heidi Chavez said that wouldn’t come into play.

“As long as they stay under 1,200 hours in a rolling calendar year and they don’t go over the 30 hours a week for health insurance, they’re not eligible for any benefits,” Chavez said.

Members then quizzed the department about the software’s performance and the county’s contract with the vendor. Chavez recapped the history, noting that Netsmart was purchased for $254,000 in 2016 and fully implemented in 2021. 

“We do contracts with them for support services each year and different features within Netsmart,” she said. “So for the doctors to be able to send out prescriptions, stuff like that, we contract with them every year. It’s about $50,000 a year that we pay for the software.”

Chavez said that, as she understood it, the implementation took place during Covid and was rushed.

“Training wasn’t available, so there was very much a lack of training when it was implemented,” she said. “[The LTE] is the only person who was employed during the implementation, so she’s been through that whole process to fully understand the system and it’s pretty complex. We’re really needing her to help train staff on all the little quirks.”

What’s more, Chavez told the committee, if you make a change to the system and it isn’t done properly, the system will delete all of the information.

“So we’re working on getting staff trained on that and then also requesting that Netsmart give us additional training that they never provided when it was implemented,” she said. “And we’ve gone through checks with them on different things that need to get updated within the system that weren’t implemented correctly. And so it’s really trying to get around all the workarounds to make the system work that she kind of knows inside and out.”

Committee members asked whether the county should seek compensation from the vendor.

“I was just wondering if it was something where they were dropping the ball, would we charge them for some extra time because of that?” committee chairman Billy Fried asked. “But if it is training and just getting someone to understand what’s going on, it sounds like this is something you inherited in the transition.”

The department was in fact seeking a lower cost for training, Hoerchler and Chavez told Fried.

“The request in my letter was that they provide this training free of charge because nobody was appropriately trained in the beginning,” Hoerchler said. “I asked for that as a fix to the problem going back to 2022 with the billing issue.”

Hoerchler said she sent her letter by certified mail so they had to accept it, and that she would find out in subsequent discussions what the company had to say.

Supervisors asked whether redundant systems existed elsewhere that could be used instead, but were told that no such alternative exists and that Netsmart is designed to handle data and billing functions that other systems in the county cannot.

Supervisor Steven Schreier thought it would be a good idea to have corporation counsel review the contract to see whether the county might recoup some of the cost.

“Because this is an additional administrative support that really shouldn’t be,” Schreier said. “And so I’m concerned that we’re paying someone a significant amount of money not only for a product but also for support. We’re not getting it, and then — maybe I misunderstood — … but it sounded like they’re actually then sometimes charging us for additional support.”

That would only happen, Chavez said, if a significant fix were needed that involved, for example, writing code, and the company would prepare a scope of work and charge for it. There was an outstanding scope of work, she said, but it had been outstanding for several years and had not been completed. 

Schreier said it was concerning that only one individual was actually properly trained on the system. 

“So they no longer technically work for the county,” he said. “But at the same time you inherited that so no one currently can really be faulted. But if we’re looking at potentially not having a resolution by the end of the year or maybe forecasting another cost going into the next year, I would want to know that we have some leverage here other than just writing strongly worded emails to them.” 

Schreier said the county should inform the company of the costs the county incurred.

“I’m not sure why we’re not pursuing getting reimbursed for that cost because they’re the ones who are really failing us for the most part,” he said. “Although again, I’m guessing they’ll just say, ‘well, why didn’t you train more people?’ So maybe it is or isn’t worth pursuing in that respect.”

Schreier said it would all depend on what the contract language was and what is or isn’t permissible. 

“But, at the same time, it is concerning to incur that kind of additional cost and be put in a situation where you really don’t have a lot of options here,” he said. “I mean, you literally have one person right now who maintains the system, so to speak.”

Hoerchler said part of the issue is that, prior to 2025, the department didn’t know what conversations were happening.

“So we have some of the documentation but perhaps not all of the documentation on what happened back and forth between Netsmart and the Human Service Center,” she said. “So I’m at a bit of a disadvantage there. We can track the expenses down and out, but what went into those of the conversations, I don’t know that I would able to find all that information out because none of those folks are here.”

Officials said staff are now developing an internal training manual and documenting processes, though those projects are not yet finished.

Schreier raised the issue of just ditching the system, but he said he recognized that wasn’t feasible.

“I realized that just saying ‘well, maybe we pull the plug on the system’ is not really a viable option because it is a crucial part of what takes place there and it would not be practical,” he said. “But at the same time, it is disappointing.”

Schreier wanted to know if any other non-county departments that use the same system had similar issues. 

“They’ve all had issues, and we’ve talked with them about their workarounds,” Hoerchler said. “We’ve collaborated with them to try and figure out if we could come up with similar issues that we could solve similarly to the way they did, and trying to work through it. But they all had issues with that software.”

Fried made the motion to approve the request for funding through the end of 2025 from 2025 vacancy dollars. That motion was approved with the suggestion to work with corporation counsel about whether any portion of the county’s incurred costs could be recovered.

Hoerchler said the department was already working with corporation counsel. The motion was approved unanimously. 

Richard Moore is the author of “Dark State” and may be reached at richardd3d.substack.com.