When the Brockton Neighborhood Health Center opens its expanded urgent care department this month, the benefits will flow to both the center’s 20,000 patients and the city’s economy.
The $2.4 million expansion of the department, which now has 21 examination rooms, was much needed for a facility that has grown rapidly over the past few years, said Susan Joss, the center’s executive director.
“We were at a point where we had to consider putting people on waiting lists,” said Joss, who added that the number of patients has increased more than 20 percent in each of the last three years. “By adding the expansion, we bought ourselves some time before we have to make that kind of tough decision.”
While the new facility won’t be available to the public for another couple of weeks, local officials got a sneak peek at a ribbon-cutting ceremony on June 30. The guests included state representatives Michael Brady, Christine Canavan, and Geraldine Creedon, as well as Brockton Mayor Linda Balzotti.
“It’s very important to have something like this during these tough economic times,” Brady said of the expansion, which was funded through both federal stimulus money and a grant. “There is a need for health care by those people who are less fortunate, and this expansion helps provide a great resource for the community.”
The recent expansion is even more impressive given the humble roots of the center, which was incorporated in 1992.
In 1994, the center began seeing patients out of a mobile van stationed in a church parking lot. It later moved into several buildings, before settling at its current home on Main Street in the downtown area in November 2007.
Currently, Brockton Neighborhood Health, which is a community health center, provides services ranging from gastroenterology to HIV treatments. The urgent care department, which used to have just six examination rooms, will not be used for emergency care. Rather, it will treat everyday maladies such as ear aches, in order to reduce the pressure on emergency rooms, according to Joss.
Overall, the center serves more than 20,000 residents of Brockton and neighboring communities, and there were 91,000 patient visits in the fiscal year that ended June 30. An additional 22,000 visits are expected in this fiscal year.
The patients include members of Haitian, Latino, and Brazilian communities. About 83 percent of current patients live below the poverty line.
“If this expansion never opened, you may have thousands of people scrambling to find care elsewhere,’’ Joss said. “The expansion was very much needed and we see it as a sign of a growing demand for health care in the community.”
The larger facilities have created an additional 30 positions at the center, which Joss said is the largest employer in downtown Brockton.
Joyce Rain Anderson, who is president of the center’s board of trustees and also a patient at the center, called the expansion a vital one.
“It allows us to have more urgent care treatment,’’ she said. “It helps alleviate what hospitals have to deal with and it gives us more room to expand as a center.”
Ultimately, Anderson sees the expansion as the latest chapter in the center’s evolution.
“I’ve watched this center grow from when it was at five different sites to now where it is at one site,’’ she said. “This is just remarkable. Right now we have a beautiful center and it’s getting this beautiful new expansion. This really adds a lot to the development of the downtown area.”
