For-profit urgent care clinic proposed in South Boston sparks concern from officials

Elected officials from South Boston say they are against a for-profit urgent care company looking to set up shop a block away from the nonprofit South Boston Community Health Center, a proposal that they fear could harm residents who rely on the existing center.

American Family Care, one of the largest urgent care center operators in the country, has its eyes on bringing a clinic to 457-469A West Broadway, just up the road from the existing community health center which averages 70,000 visits a year.

The close proximity between the two “has the potential to jeopardize the financial stability of South Boston Community Health Center,” City Councilor Ed Flynn said last week before the council approved his order for a hearing on how for-profit health care centers impact nonprofits.

Exact details on what’s being proposed were not immediately available. The city Zoning Board of Appeals is set to hold a hearing on American Family Care’s request on Wednesday.

While urgent care centers provide walk-in services for patients experiencing non-emergency medical issues such as small injuries and minor infections, some of them are for-profit, Flynn said. That means the businesses rely on “investments from private equity firms and venture capital funds,” he wrote in his hearing 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 hearing order states.

But at the same time, Flynn said, more for-profit urgent care centers are popping up across the city, with some being located near nonprofit community health care centers, threatening their “financial viability.”

“Let me be clear, I don’t want to see cuts to programs, services and staff at any of these beloved community health care centers,” Flynn said. “As similar to other development issues, this may be the first shoe to drop in South Boston but it could happen in many of the other neighborhoods across the city.”

American Family Care operates more than 200 facilities across 26 states, treating nearly 3 million patients a year, according to its company website. It looks to have more than 500 clinics nationwide in the next five years.

The company says it is different from other urgent care clinics because it provides “digital X-rays, state-of-the-art diagnostic procedures, electronic medical record keeping,” among other services.

City Councilor At-Large Erin Murphy echoed Flynn’s concerns and said there has been a lack of information about the proposal. She highlighted how the existing community health center partners with city hospitals and how it distributed 35,000 vaccines and tested 14,000 people for COVID-19 during the pandemic.

“I am deeply concerned that the South Boston Community Health Center, as a non-profit, will be at a financial disadvantage on the unequal footing of AFC’s for-profit status,” she said, “and the manifold good the Health Center achieves should not be undermined because of this.”

State Sen. Nick Collins, speaking to the Herald, compared the potential impacts the for-profit urgent care clinic could have on South Boston Community Health Center to the financial crisis plaguing Steward Health Care System.

Steward, the largest private for-profit healthcare network in the country, reportedly considered closing four of its nine Massachusetts hospitals due to its dire financial state. The Dallas-based system allegedly owes $50 million in unpaid rent and is the subject of more than a dozen lawsuits in Massachusetts filed by vendors and employees over unpaid invoices since 2022.

But the company’s executive vice president wrote in a Friday letter to employees that the system has secured a “significant financial transaction” that he says will “help stabilize” the company and save some of its Bay State hospitals from shuttering.