UMMC Holmes County in Lexington, part of University of Mississippi Medical Center, is slated to open a prenatal clinic for some of the state's poorest residents, according to a Mississippi Public Broadcasting report.
The decision to open the clinic comes as the Mississippi State Department of Health had to discontinue its prenatal service due to budget constraints and a decrease in the number of patients taking advantage of prenatal programs, according to the report. The state has directed patients to federally qualified health centers for care, but Holmes County's federally qualified health center does not offer the service, the report notes.
So UMMC Holmes County is stepping in.
"We've got a visiting OB-GYN that started two weeks ago coming from Grenada, [Miss.], to see these patients," Paige Lawrence, the hospital's clinical director, told Mississippi Public Broadcasting. "It was more community service to give these people somewhere to go because there's nowhere. They were all using the health department."
The prenatal clinic is expected to officially open this fall.
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