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Citing tight budgets and high expenses, Planned Parenthood affiliates based in Omaha and Des Moines are likely to merge by the end of the summer.
The deal will create one large affiliate: Planned Parenthood of the Heartland, with administrative offices in Des Moines.
The paperwork finalizing the merger is expected to be finished late this month, said Jill June, CEO of Planned Parenthood of Greater Iowa.
Her group will merge with Planned Parenthood of Nebraska and Council Bluffs. June will run the merged affiliate.
The merger is a long time coming, said Chris Funk, who worked at the Nebraska organization for 21 years before retiring as CEO in April. With rising medical expenses and dwindling resources, Nebraska needed a partner.
“We really needed to look at collaboration, and Iowa was the most logical,” Funk said. “We need to maintain services, we need to keep them affordable and we need to work together.”
Planned Parenthood provides reproductive health services to women and men, including exams, birth control, testing for sexually transmitted diseases and sex education. The group also provides abortions.
The merger is not expected to result in fewer Planned Parenthood clinics in Nebraska or Iowa, said June, or to decrease the services being offered, including reproductive health exams, access to contraception, abortion referrals, and abortions. The only Planned Parenthood facility in Nebraska that provides abortions is in Lincoln.
The Greater Iowa group has been running the Nebraska and Council Bluffs affiliate under a temporary management contract since April. Some employees were laid off at that time, but June said she doesn’t anticipate more staff reductions in the merger or the closing of any Planned Parenthood center.
The Nebraska and Greater Iowa affiliates treated a total of 70,000 people last year at 23 centers in the states. The Nebraska affiliate has five centers in Omaha, Council Bluffs and Lincoln, while the Greater Iowa affiliate, one of three in the state, has 18 satellite centers, including ones in Sioux City, Red Oak and Creston.
The merged organization’s accounting, information technology and management operations will be based in Des Moines, reducing administrative costs.
“If we can save a dollar, that’s another dollar that can go toward providing better advocacy and education,” said Jennifer Mahlendorf, board member of Planned Parenthood of Nebraska and Council Bluffs. “It makes sense to put your ego aside.”
When Funk started at Planned Parenthood, there were more than 200 affiliates around the country. Now, with roughly 90 left, mergers are everywhere.
“Consolidation has been the way that Planned Parenthoods have been able to continue to provide services,” said Funk, who stepped down because she was ready to retire and also to help facilitate the merger.
For years, most money coming into Planned Parenthood of Nebraska and Council Bluffs was from the federal government’s Title X grant program dedicated to family planning.
In 2005, Funk and the Nebraska organization decided to leave Title X, saying federal restrictions had made the program unmanageable.
The Nebraska group also has suffered financially, Funk said, because the state does not participate in a Medicaid program that gives more families access to family planning services.
Under that program, Medicaid approves services for women and families whose income is up to 185 percent of the federal poverty level.
Iowa uses both Title X funding and Medicaid waivers.
Former State Sen. Don Pederson of North Platte was chairman of a Medicaid task force that asked the state to apply for the family planning program.
Taking part in the federal program was projected to save Nebraska millions through fewer unintended pregnancies, but the state never acted on it.
“We got no explanation for it,” Pederson said. “Nothing happened to it, which makes me think it didn’t have anything to do with money.”
Nebraska could still enroll in the program. State Sen. Danielle Nantkes of Lincoln introduced a bill to that effect last session.
The state already provides contraceptive and reproductive health services to women, Nantkes said. This bill would expand it by qualifying about 20,000 more women for assistance through the program, she said.
“What it covers are things that are really important: annual exams, Pap smears, breast exams,” Nantkes said.
Greg Schleppenbach, a spokesman for the Nebraska Catholic Conference, testified at a committee hearing that increasing access to contraception does not result in fewer unintended pregnancies and fewer abortions.
June disagrees.
And over time, she said, she would like to see more Nebraskans have access to Planned Parenthood services. She said the merger will allow the organization to grow.
“Many people in Nebraska would benefit by having more convenient places to go,” June said.
Contact the writer:
444-1310, elizabeth.ahlin@owh.com
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