Boston council hears warning on for-profit urgent care threat to health centers

BOSTON — March 7, 2024 — Boston City Council panel warns that for-profit urgent care centers threaten the financial survival of the city's 22 nonprofit community health centers. The Committee on Public Health, Homelessness, and Recovery, chaired by Councilor John FitzGerald, convened Thursday under Docket 0264, filed by Councilors Edward M. Flynn and Erin J. Murphy after a for-profit urgent care center was proposed one block from the South Boston Community Health Center on West Broadway — a proposal since withdrawn. Dr. Bisola Ojakutu, Boston's Commissioner of Health, told the panel that life expectancy in South Boston is five years below that of the Back Bay and that for-profit centers, by targeting commercially insured patients, would strip the cross-subsidy that pays for interpreter services, food pantries, and behavioral health. Michael Curry, CEO of the Massachusetts League of Community Health Centers, warned that when margins disappear, for-profit operators "can close their doors with no notice or obligation to the community," citing the earlier collapse of Roxbury Comprehensive Health Center. Bill Halpin, CEO of the South Boston Community Health Center, which serves 70,000 patients annually, said his organization loses money on every patient when federal grants are excluded, and disclosed that the state had just asked his center to absorb migrants from a newly opening Fort Point shelter. Flynn closed by calling on the Boston Planning Department — which had already recommended approval of the West Broadway for-profit proposal before the applicant withdrew — never to recommend a for-profit medical facility adjacent to a nonprofit health center again.