DALTON, Ga. — The DEO Clinic, which provides free primary and preventive health care to some residents of Whitfield and Murray counties who do not have health insurance, could move into Dalton’s Mack Gaston Community Center in early July.

The City Council voted 4-0 Monday to accept a joint proposal by the clinic and the Northwest Georgia Healthcare Partnership to operate a clinic in the center. The DEO Clinic would be open four days a week for treatment. On Fridays, the Partnership would have staff on site to help sign people up for health insurance and to refer those with insurance to other providers.

Mayor Dennis Mock was out of town. Mayor Pro Tem Denise Wood typically votes only in the event of a tie when presiding over a council meeting but she voted to show her support for the proposal.

The DEO Clinic and the Partnership made a joint proposal for the clinic last month. They were the only organizations to respond to the city’s request for proposals. The Partnership promotes health and healthy communities in the Greater Dalton area.

The sides still have to negotiate the exact terms of the lease, but City Administrator Jason Parker said he believes they should be able to have something for the council members to vote on at their June 18 meeting.

DEO Clinic Executive Director Tom Brown said he hopes to have a minimal interruption of services as the clinic moves from its current location at 411 Central Ave.

“I’d hope we could do it over a long weekend,” he said. “We would only be closed Monday.”

The proposal calls for the clinic to be open:

• Monday, 9 a.m. to 8 p.m.

• Tuesday, 8 a.m. to 5 p.m.

• Wednesday, 8 a.m. to 5 p.m.

• Thursday, 8 a.m. to 8 p.m.

Those are the same days and hours the DEO Clinic is open at its location. The proposal said offering night hours is convenient for patients who work mornings.

The DEO Clinic provides care through a mixture of paid staff and volunteers.

The proposal calls for the facility to also be open Fridays from 8 a.m. to 5 p.m. to enroll and refer patients.

Partnership Executive Director Greg Dent said staff would help sign up those who are eligible for Obamacare, Medicaid and PeachCare, the joint state-federal program that provides health insurance for children in low-income families. They would also help those who have private insurance as well as Medicare, Medicaid and PeachCare to make appointments with other providers including the Whitfield County Health Department.

“We will also help make sure they make those appointments,” Dent said. “For those who do not have transportation, we will coordinate with the Whitfield County transit service or transport them ourselves.”

The organizations are not seeking any subsidy, but the proposal does request a five-year lease since the DEO Clinic would be leaving its current location. The proposal also asks for a lease of $1 a year.

Georgia Mountains Health Services, a Morganton-based nonprofit agency, operated the Partnership Health Center in the community center for some five years. But it left the community center in April, three months before its lease would have ended, claiming it was losing money. Its clinic was open five days a week, but CEO Steven Miracle had requested that the clinic be open fewer days. Council members said they would be agreeable to that suggestion as a temporary measure until a new provider could be secured.

Georgia Mountains was paying $1 a year for the space.

Last year, Mock sent a letter to Georgia Mountains on May 9 canceling the lease effective at midnight on July 31. While Mock’s letter did not specify why he terminated the lease, he said in an interview, “We’ve had some concerns about whether they have been open the hours they should be.”

On June 2 of last year, City Council members agreed city officials would try to renegotiate the lease. The sides reached an agreement in August that called for the clinic to be open five days a week.

While the DEO Clinic will only be open four days a week, council members pointed out that because of its extended days on Monday and Thursday it will be open almost as many hours each week as the Partnership Health Center was.

“When you take out the hours it is closed for lunch, it will be open 35 or 36 hours,” said council member Tyree Goodlett. “And it isn’t as if it is completely closed on Fridays. They will have people in there making sure that people who are eligible for Medicaid and Obamacare and things like that get signed up and helping people make appointments with other clinics.”

One of the things to be negotiated in the lease that council members requested is reporting that the DEO Clinic and the Partnership must make to the council.

“It may be that after we look at the numbers, we see that we need even more resources than the DEO Clinic currently offers,” said council member Annalee Harlan. “We may also see after open enrollment this year that we can connect more patients with insurance and direct them to more appropriate providers than the DEO Clinic, whose mission is to serve those without insurance. Often people are just unaware of the resources they are qualified for.”

According to the County Health Rankings & Roadmaps website, an initiative of the University of Wisconsin Population Health Institute, 22 percent of Whitfield County adults lack health insurance, compared to 16 percent for the state. Just 11.3 percent of adults in the country as a whole lack health insurance.