Northern Kentucky Family Health Care Centers has changed its name and some of its locations.

        After 31 years, Northern Kentucky's oldest and largest nonprofit community health agency has changed its name to HealthPoint Family Care. It is merging or moving some of its small centers into larger quarters in a reorganization aimed at serving as many patients as possible.

        The network of clinics in three counties serves 21,600 mostly low-income patients.

        “We wanted a name that was familiar to people throughout the region,” said CEO Christopher Goddard.

        He added the public tended to associate the agency's old name with Kentucky's northernmost counties of Boone, Kenton and Campbell, and it often was confused with other organizations, such as the Northern Kentucky Independent Health District.

        The new name also reflects the agency's opening of a new 6,000-square-foot primary care medical center in rural Bracken County, Mr. Goddard said.

        The new center — scheduled to open in September on donated land at the AA Highway and Ky. 19

        — is nearly three times larger than the agency's rented space in Brooksville, he said. It will serve 4,800 patients.

        “It wasn't as nice a facility, and it didn't allow us to grow,” Mr. Goddard said of the agency's rented storefront in Brooksville.

        He added the new Bracken County Health Care Center is centrally located, and it is expected to make HealthPoint's services more accessible to patients in neighboring Mason, Robertson, Harrison and Pendleton counties.

        In another change, HealthPoint is opening a new health care center in Campbell County. The 6,300 patients from the Newport and Dayton centers will be transferred to a new 7,000-square-foot center in the Bellevue Medical Arts Building in September, Mr. Goddard said.

        The Newport patients were transferred to Dayton last month after the landlord for the Newport clinic opted not to renew the agency's lease.

        Finally, HealthPoint is closing the Ida Spence United Methodist Mission Health Center in Covington Aug. 15. Those 800 patients can receive care at two of HealthPoint's clinics in Covington that are about two miles away and accessible by bus. Although Ida Spence patients will have to travel farther, they will receive 45 hours of service a week at the new locations, compared to 27 hours at the Ida Spence center, Mr. Goddard said.

        Service also will be expanded beyond the traditional primary care to include pediatric, dental and women's health services on a regular basis.

        The reorganization is being driven in part by changes in Medicaid reimbursements, Mr. Goddard said.

        Instead of reimbursing community health centers for the actual cost of the care, the Medicaid program now pays providers such as HealthPoint a set amount.

        “The new administration is not going to prop up us or any other community health center,” Mr. Goddard said.

        Relocating the Ida Spence patients is expected to save $150,000 a year. The Newport and Dayton Centers, which had a combined loss of just over $206,000 last year, should see a profit of nearly $116,000 by the second year of operation in Bellevue, Mr. Goddard said.

        HealthPoint provides family medicine, pediatrics, obstetrics and gynecology, dentistry, podiatry and behavioral health. About 45 percent of its patients are covered by Medicaid and Medicare.

        Twenty-nine percent have no health insurance and are charged sliding scale fees, based on their ability to pay and family size. The remaining 26 percent of the agency's patients have private insurance.

        Besides its health centers, the agency also operates school-based clinics in the Silver Grove, Erlanger-Elsmere, Bellevue and Southgate school districts.

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