The Sexual and Reproductive Health Clinic in Paso Robles at the County of San Luis Obispo Health Agency will officially be closing its doors at the end of the month.

The county health agency is currently looking into other options for community members. According to Director Nicholas Drews, the county is reaching out to places such as CAPSLO and SLO Noor Foundation in an effort to improve reproductive health access in North County.

According to a budget report, the health agency is forced to cut back on services due to a $38.5 million budget gap.

“The way that we identified essentially where we would define the reductions was by looking at areas in which we were going to be able to transfer the services to potentially somewhere else in the community,” Drews said.

The sexual and reproductive health clinics were then put on the table for termination.

“CHC currently provides this service throughout our county and throughout Santa Barbara [County],” Drews added. “They even have a clinic in Templeton, which is a women’s health clinic, and there did seem to be some overlap of the services we provided and the overlap of the services they provided.”

According to Drews, CHC locations in San Luis Obispo County accept the same insurances as the health clinic located off of 4th Street in Paso Robles. Letters have also been sent to patients letting them know the clinic is closing but they’re welcome to transfer to the Templeton Central Health Clinic location for the same services.

The SLO Noor Foundation provides free primary care services in North County weekly in its mobile van. There are discussions in progress about the potential utilization of the company’s Women’s Mobile Health van to also provide reproductive health services to women in North County.

“We’re talking with them about potentially utilizing a secondary van that they have, that mostly goes down into the Santa Maria area, but does focus on women’s health and maybe potentially relocating that if there’s appropriate funding available for that,” Drews added.

“We have been asked to kind of formulate what would it look like for us to ramp up service,” SLO Noor Mobile Clinic Manager Ted Malpass said. “Is it something that we think we need based on our patients and the people that we see each day out here? We’re still discussing and determining what our best path would be.”