The Brazos Valley Community Action Agency closed its family planning clinic in Washington County on Wednesday, saying that not enough patients were using its services.
The clinic had reduced its operations to one day every two weeks in recent months because of a lack of patients, said Eric Todd, senior administration for the agency.
A mid-level practitioner, nurses and a clerical worker traveled from Brazos County and used space borrowed from the Washington County Health Department at 1016 E. Blue Bell Road in Brenham.
"All we did was provide family planning every other week," Todd said. "The overhead was so high that, from a business perspective and service delivery perspective, we are just not needed at this point.
The clinic offered comprehensive family planning services to low-income patients, and about five patients visited each time it was open, Todd said. Those patients have been referred to other clinics in the Brazos Valley, he said.
The Brazos Valley Community Action Agency, or BVCAA, runs community health centers in Bryan, College Station and four surrounding counties that are open 40 hours a week and provide a full range of medical services.
The nearest clinic to Brenham is the Grimes County Health Center in Navasota, but Todd said the agency planned to open a full-time clinic in Somerville in 2009 or 2010. Somerville is in Burleson County near Washington County.
The other Brazos Valley centers are in Robertson, Leon, Grimes and Madison counties.
The Brenham Family Planning Clinic was the last unit run by the BVCAA to perform only family planning services. The BVCAA operated only family planning clinics when it started in 1972 from a federal charter.
"Since then we have become much broader," Todd said. "We now provide full medical care."
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