NATCHEZ — Restructuring across the state means Adams County’s health department will refocus some of its services from treatment to prevention.

The changes will also mean new hours at some county departments, which operate under the auspices of the Mississippi State Department of Health.

In Adams County, those hours will be 8 a.m. to 5 p.m. Monday to Friday, with services offered by appointment. In Franklin County, the new hours will be 8 a.m. to 5 p.m. Tuesday and Thursday, while in Wilkinson and Jefferson counties the department will be open 8 a.m. to 5 p.m. Monday, Wednesday and Friday.

The changes — which in other counties included shuttered clinics — came after months of study and years of changing health care environment, Mississippi State Department of Health Director of Communications Liz Sharlot said.

“Our numbers reduced so drastically because there are so many other places that people can go to get their care,” she said. “People have options now with Obamacare, with Medicaid Managed Care and community health centers — and that’s good. We want them to have a medical home, but it means that our patient numbers are severely decreasing as they can find those services elsewhere that we used to be the only place they could find them.”

No Mississippian will go without core health services, Sharlot said, and the department will continue to provide STD monitoring and communicable disease care, family planning and WIC services by appointment. Walk-ins will be accepted on a limited basis.

“Those services we have always offered, we still will, you may need to call, now,” she said.

The focus of the health department will now be on prevention.

“If you look at death rates, more people die from chronic disease — heart attack, smoking-related disease, diabetes — than from communicable disease or cancer, so most of the deaths we can work on and prevent,” Sharlot said. “We are going to go out into the communities to go out and do education and prevent a lot of those deaths that way.”

One notable change is that the health department will no longer be enrolling new maternity patients, a program Sharlot said only enrolled 1,500 people statewide last year.

The department will also continue inspections of restaurants, child-care facilities, hospitals, on-site wastewater and other facilities requiring the health department’s stamp of approval.