Key contract terminated for Monroe County’s family planning clinic, will close after 18 years
The news out of a Friday afternoon meeting between Monroe County government officials and representatives of the IFHC (Indiana Family Health Council) is that the county health department’s Futures Family Planning Clinic will close.
Monroe County’s legal department notified a long list of county officials that the county was informed that IFCH will “terminate” the contract and that the effect will be the closure of the clinic.
IFHC has funded the Futures Clinic through Title X. Title X is a federal program for giving people family planning and reproductive health services.
IFHC has told Monroe County officials that media inquiries should be referred to IFHC. Responding to B Square emailed question, Kristin Adams, who is president and CEO of IFHC, wrote that there will be an official release on Tuesday.
[Updated Tues., Aug. 27 at 12:25 p.m. The news release from IFCH states: [T]he Indiana Family Health Council (IFHC) will assume responsibility for the clinic under its Indiana Family Planning Centers structure. The new clinic will be named Bloomington Family Planning Center.]
The clinic is located in the Monroe County health building at 7th Street and College Avenue.
Based on the plan put in place by the county board of health at a special meeting held this past Wednesday, if IFHC was not able or willing to provide 90 days of coverage, to allow the clinic to reset, it would be permanently closed, starting 30 days from Aug. 26. The clinic currently has no staff.
The clinic is required to provide some coverage for that 30-day window—for emergencies and to serve patients with immediate needs.
Monroe County has arranged to provide the interim 30-day coverage through HealthNet, Planned Parenthood, and Pace Community Action Agency. Pace has a clinic in Bedford.
According to county board of health president Stephen Pritchard at Wednesday’s special meeting, the Futures Clinic saw a complete staff turnover at the end of last year.
That comes in the context of a generally strained climate among employees across the whole department, not just the clinic.
Former employees of the department, who have either resigned or been fired, have been critical of county health administrator Lori Kelley, who started the job in June 2022, replacing long-time administrator Penny Caudill.
Concerns about staffing in the health department arose before the end of that year when some employees left the department. The issue was portrayed by the board at the time as not as bad as some reports had indicated.
According to Elizabeth Sensenstein, who is Monroe County’s personnel administrator, the tally as of this week shows that 21 full-time and 7 part-time employees have left the county department since June of 2022.
Based on the county’s 2024 salary ordinance, a full complement of staff for the entire health department, full- and part-time, is around 50.
What will be lost with the closing of Futures Clinic?
While it is not clear what if any part IFHC might now play in Monroe County family planning, The B Square has heard background hopes that IFHC would itself choose to fill the role that the Futures Clinic played.
What role has the clinic played, since it opened in 2006?
According to two sources who were in Monroe County government at the time, the role of the clinic was not necessarily in unique kinds of service it offered, but rather a neutral place to receive them.
County councilor Marty Hawk at the time, who still serves on the council, now as the sole Republican, recalls when the clinic was established by the health administrator at the time, Bob Schmidt.
Hawk told The B Square that part of the motivation for establishing the clinic was to provide a place for provision of family planning services for women who were reluctant to seek such services from Planned Parenthood—due to the organization’s provision of abortion services.
It’s a point that Hawk has sometimes made in her opposition to awarding any of the county’s annual Sophia Travis social services grant funding to Planned Parenthood. Hawk has cited the county’s own Futures Clinic as a better focus of the county government’s support.
Likely joining Hawk on the county council next year is David Henry—the Democrat is one of three unchallenged at-large candidates on the Nov. 5 ballot. About 18 years ago, when the Futures Clinic was established, Henry was working under health administrator Schmidt in the area of public health emergency management, as the pandemic planner for the county.
Henry described to The B Square how the clinic was intended to serve not just women who were reluctant to seek such services from Planned Parenthood, but also those who were reluctant to seek services from faith-based organizations. Henry described the Futures Clinic as “probably the most bipartisan way someone could get women’s health care in this community.”
About the significance of losing the Future’s clinic, Henry put it like this: “What the community loses is a bipartisan way station for family planning—that’s neither Planned Parenthood, nor a crisis prevention center that’s faith based.”
Based on Herald-Times reporting from 2006, the Future’s Clinic was seeing 85 patients a month in the summer. That translates to an annualized number of around 1,000.
The numbers provided to The B Square this week by health administrator Lori Kelley showed a big drop after the COVID-19 pandemic.
In 2017–2019 the clinic averaged around 1,450 patients a year. In 2021, the number was 1,021 and dropped to 866 in 2022, with the most recent full year of data, in 2023, coming at 604 patients. Through July 31 this year, 369 patients have been seen.
