Hernando County’s Low-Cost Health Services to Grow

By Asjylyn Loder, St. Petersburg Times, Fla.

Dec. 28–BROOKSVILLE — The Hernando County Health Department will soon expand reduced-cost health care to low-income residents, using a $1.95-million federal grant.

The department will open the Nature Coast Community Health Center at the end of January. The clinic, at the Health Department’s headquarters on S Main Street in Brooksville, will offer prenatal care, behavioral health services, expanded dental and primary care services and a reduced-cost pharmacy, said department spokeswoman Ann-Gayl Ellis.

“This new health clinic will allow us to open up to a lot more people, especially those individuals who fall between the poverty level but don’t make quite enough to afford traditional health insurance,” Ellis said.

The current clinic’s services include perinatal health care, a women’s health program, as well as some dental and primary care services. The clinic served 30,000 clients in the last fiscal year. Low-income families, for example, a family of four earning between $23,000 and $27,000, qualified for reduced prices.

With the new funding, the clinic plans to offer reduced-cost care to families above that threshold, Ellis said.

The county Health Department won the federal grant because it serves a medically underserved community in two ZIP codes, 34601 and 34614, which span the Brooksville area and northwestern Hernando County, Ellis explained.

Those communities are designated as underserved because of a shortage of primary care physicians, higher incidences of chronic illnesses such as heart disease and diabetes, and a high percentage of families living below 200 percent of the federal poverty level, or $38,700 for a family of four. Within those ZIP codes, 23 percent of the residents do not have health insurance, Ellis said.

The expanded services will be available to all county residents and not just those living within the underserved ZIP codes, Ellis said.

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