A for-profit pressing care clinic that drew concern from South Boston elected officers and group members won’t be going ahead on West Broadway after the applicant backed out.
The metropolis’s Zoning Board of Appeal on Tuesday accepted American Family Care’s request to withdraw the appliance which referred to as for the creation of an pressing care clinic at 457-469A West Broadway, only a block away from the nonprofit South Boston Community Health Center.
City Councilors Ed Flynn and Erin Murphy and state Sen. Nick Collins, all from Southie, have been in opposition to the clinic as a result of potential destructive monetary impacts it might’ve had on the present group well being heart at 409 West Broadway.
“I’d like to thank my neighbors and community organizations for speaking loud and clear on their serious concerns,” Flynn stated in a press release to the Herald. “For-profit urgent cares in close proximity to our neighborhood community health centers could potentially threaten their viability and have a devastating impact on healthcare access and quality of care.”
The City Council final week accepted Flynn’s order to carry a listening to on how for-profit pressing care clinics impression nonprofit well being facilities.
While pressing care facilities present walk-in providers for sufferers experiencing non-emergency medical points equivalent to small accidents and minor infections, a few of them are for-profit, Flynn stated. That means the companies depend on “investments from private equity firms and venture capital funds,” he wrote in his listening to order.
“Urgent care centers can be attractive investments because they do not have the legal obligations to treat patients if they do not have the ability to pay, unlike emergency departments,” the listening to order states.
In a memo to the ZBA final week, the Boston Planning & Development Agency beneficial approval of the challenge which might have positioned the pressing care clinic in a “pre-existing but untenanted first floor space.”
“This proposed location is particularly well-sited for an urgent care clinic,” the memo said, “as it is an approximate 2-minute walk from the South Boston Community Health Center and an approximate 10-minute walk from multiple nearby dental establishments, therefore reinforcing this (corridor) as an important destination servicing South Boston residents’ health needs.”
But Flynn disagreed, saying, “This is not a healthcare desert and there is not a community need for this proposal.”
American Family Care operates greater than 200 amenities throughout 26 states, treating practically 3 million sufferers a 12 months, in line with its firm web site. It seems to be to have greater than 500 clinics nationwide within the subsequent 5 years.
The firm says it’s totally different from different pressing care clinics as a result of it offers “digital X-rays, state-of-the-art diagnostic procedures, electronic medical record keeping,” amongst different providers.
American Family Care didn’t instantly return a Herald request for remark.
Source: www.bostonherald.com”