The metropolis’s largest and most numerous neighborhood is ready to obtain an uptick in healthcare, with the Boston Planning and Development Agency shifting ahead with a revamped Harvard Street Neighborhood Health Center.
The BPDA Board of Directors final week unanimously authorized the middle relocating to 3 scarcely used heaps subsequent to its present headquarters on Blue Hill Avenue in Dorchester. The revamped facility will create a ten to fifteen% enhance in staffing positions from the present worker rely of 100-plus, in response to undertaking paperwork.
HSNHC, an unbiased nonprofit, has operated out of 632 Blue Hill Ave., since 1976. Meeting the demand for providers from residents in Dorchester and the encircling space has been troublesome because the constructing dates again to the early 1900s, officers say.
“That building is getting very old and inefficient,” HSNHC President and CEO Charley Murphy stated earlier than the BPDA board greenlighted the undertaking on Thursday. “The new building will allow us to house all of our programs under one roof … which is much more efficient. This will allow us to grow our patient count given the increased capacity as well as the increased staff count.”
Project paperwork don’t present how a lot the undertaking will price and when development will start and finish on the adjoining Ellington Street and Old Road heaps, near Franklin Park. The mayor’s press workplace didn’t reply to a Herald inquiry Saturday in search of these particulars.
The Zoning Board of Appeals additionally will likely be voting on the well being heart earlier than the BPDA continues a design-and-review course of, stated Eileen Michaud, an company undertaking supervisor.
Once all is claimed and finished, HSNHC will likely be reworked right into a three-story, 40-foot-tall facility that includes medical, laboratory and pharmacy providers. There will likely be area for group occasions and non permanent programming to be held.
Officials are additionally seeking to increase the middle’s footprint on Blue Hill Avenue in potential future phases.
Last yr, HSNHC supplied care to 7,600 sufferers throughout greater than 35,000 visits, figures supplied in undertaking paperwork spotlight. Over 95% of the sufferers had been individuals of colour, and a majority had incomes at or beneath the poverty line, counting on both Medicare or Medicaid. Some had been uninsured.
BPDA board member Brian Miller gave a glowing evaluation of HSNHC.
“The health centers are so critical to our neighborhoods,” he stated. “It’s amazing that you’re able to do that work in that old building. This new space looks fantastic.”
Source: www.bostonherald.com”