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The Frederick County Health Department is taking steps to help clients who will need family planning services and treatment for sexually transmitted diseases, once those services are eliminated from the department in January.

The health department is putting together a proposal to solicit private providers to offer these services after Jan. 1. A private provider will be chosen by the health department based on a bid.

"Our plan, once the health department stops providing these services, is to contract out with the private sector," the department's health officer, Dr. Barbara A. Brookmyer, said Tuesday. "We're now developing a process for rating the bids. Hopefully this transition will run smoothly for our clients as much as possible."

Brookmyer said the private provider must offer services to teens, women and men who have no insurance. State grant funding will be available to help pay for the expected increase in patients.

Planned Parenthood of Frederick plans to bid for the right to provide services to former health department clients that need family planning and treatment for sexually transmitted diseases.

The agency anticipates receiving a slew of new patients once services are no longer provided by the health department.

"It's in our best interest to apply," said John Nugent, president of Planned Parenthood of Maryland.

Planned Parenthood already has a similar arrangement with the Talbot County Health Department, Nugent said.

Brookmyer said most of the health department's clients know about the state budget cuts that have forced the health department to eliminate these programs. Health department officials are notifying clients of their plans to contract out the services.

But Brookmyer said this process is challenging, since many patients leave no phone number and prefer not to be contacted.

As a result of the dropped programs, five nurses, one office clerk and four interpreters who worked in the departments will be laid off. Eight staff members will be reassigned to an H1N1 influenza planning and response service, which is funded by a temporary federal grant.

The layoffs were based on seniority, consistent with the state's process of determining layoffs, the health department said in a press release.

The funding cut also reduced the department's budget by 25 percent for cancer screenings and tobacco prevention and cessation programs.

The scale-backs in services and employees came as a result of an $814,239 cut in the department's fiscal 2010 budget, imposed by the Maryland Board of Public Works in August.

Public Works approved $454 million in budget cuts to help the state's lingering budget woes. Of that, $210 million were cuts to Maryland's 23 counties and Baltimore City.

The health department's cut is part of a larger $10 million slash in aid from the state to Frederick County.

The cuts compounded the health department's financial woes, as the agency's budget had already taken a $464,000 hit in at the end of fiscal 2009 — which ended June 30 — that led to a 15 percent reduction in its health services staff.

The department said that 98 percent of its budget is salaries, and the recent cuts from the state could not be absorbed in operating costs.

E-mail Sherry Greenfield at sgreenfield@gazette.net.