With the Center for Family Health-Hillsdale on West Carleton Road closing on Friday, the building’s doors will shut, but not for long.
Hillsdale Hospital plans to fill the building with specialty services in the near future.
“It’s a beautiful building and it’s in a prime location for Hillsdale Hospital,” Jeremiah Hodshire, director of organizational development at Hillsdale Hospital, said.
Due to low numbers, the Center for Family Health announced June 19 that the Hillsdale center would close Aug. 31.
“We are saddened to close our health center in Hillsdale, and we reached the decision very reluctantly,” Molly Kaser, CEO of the Center for Family Health, said in a news statement.
The Center for Family Health opened its Hillsdale location in 2015. The Jackson-based center is federally qualified and brings primary medical care and dental services in Jackson County as well as medical care to Hillsdale County, according to the center’s website.
The center paid fair-market value for the building, since Hillsdale Hospital owned the place and used it for primary care physicians prior to the center opening a location in Hillsdale.
Terry Langston, director of communications and advocacy at the Center for Family Health, said that the Hillsdale center provided family medicine services.
“They provided all services an individual would need to stay healthy,” he said.
Hillsdale Hospital has organized a task force to determine what specialty services will set up office in the building and hopes to have a clearer plan within the next 30 days.
Langston said that the center had to bring services to 950 people a year in order to remain open.
“We need the number to be financially stable,” he said.
A February report from the Michigan Department of Licensing and Regulatory Affairs, bureau of Community and Health Services had The Center for Family Health – Hillsdale listed as the only Federally Qualified Health Center provider in Hillsdale County.
While Hillsdale’s location of Center for Family Health will close, their patients will not be left behind.
Langston said that the center will provide a shuttle service from Hillsdale to the Jackson location for Hillsdale patients.
“We will provide transportation at no cost,” Langston said.
This will allow patients to continue to receive the level of care that they were previously receiving at the center.
“We have seen an increase in Hillsdale primary care sites,” Kaser said. “This, coupled with our own low number of patients being seen at our Hillsdale site, are factors that have resulted in our decision to consolidate our health center sites to make the best use of our resources.”
Seven centers within the Center for Family Health will remain open, providing care ranging from primary to dental to prenatal care.
