Health Stop Opens For-Profit Center

A new clinic-style private health center opened in Cambridge yesterday, part of the latest innovation in the country's fastest growing kind of health care.

Since '1980, more othan 1,000 private health centers offering inexpensive, walk-in care for non-life-threatening ailments have opened across the country. Proponents of the system attribute the centers' success to their low cost, long hours and the fact that they don't require an appointment.

The Health Stop Medical Center at 2067-2095 Mass. Ave. near Porter Square is the fifth center the company has opened in the Boston area since the beginning of October.

"I'm convinced that the whole field of for-profit health care is going to grow very much." Health Stop President Kenneth V. Hachikian '71 said yesterday.

Centers such as Health Stop offer walk-in treatment for routine medical and surgical emergencies--such as, stitches--which until recently were treated in hospital emergency rooms or doctors offices.

"In a few years we may not have every hospital on every corner with a licensed emergency room," added Dr. Joseph G. Maloney '71, chief medical director and vice president of Health Stop.

"We have a system that is full of mismanagement," he explained, adding. "We have a system that has too many hospitals and far too many emergency rooms."

Challenge to Hospitals

The emergence of private health centers poses a marketing challenge to hospitals, many of which are already operating on tight budgets, and has caused many to rethink their role in the community.

City-owned and Harvard-affiliated Cambridge Hospital currently operates nine neighborhood health centers, and administrators there acknowledge that facilities like Health Stop are a source of competition.

"That's a little different product from what we're selling," Associate Administrator for Professional Services Michael J. Ryan said recently. But he noted that some people targeted by the neighborhood centers might also decide to use the private facilities, and he said the hospital is stepping up its advertising.

"It used to be that everything was word of mouth and it was considered beneath a physician or hospital to advertise," Ryan said, adding. "They are going after a piece of the marketplace in a way that 10 years ago their office peers would have thought was patently unprofessional."

"There is a growing emphasis on making health care...more like the rest of the world," Ryan explained.

Edna Homa, chairman of the Cambridge Health Policy Board which oversees the city-owned hospital said yesterday. "Cambridge is relatively under-served by what I would call everyday run-of-the-mill primary health care."

"Health care here is too high class; the middle class is pardon my French, getting screwed. The high class is the offices and clinics [Harvard affiliated] at the Mt. Auburn [Hospital] and then there are the neighborhood health clinics and nothing in between," she explained. "People should be critical of what they get and a little competition is good," Homa added.

Both Ryan and Maloney mentioned the oversupply of physicians nationwide and noted that most are in narrow specialties. The traditional family general practitioner is a thing of the past, they observed, and hospitals have been forced to assume a greater proportion of the services those doctors offered.

"I sympathize with the institutions that will be affected by us in the short run, but we are part of the solution, not the problem," Maloney said.

A major feature of the neighborhood health centers and the old family doctor is the long-term relationships formed between physicians and patients. Dr. David A. Mann, one of the Cambridge Health Stop physicians, said yesterday the center is best suited for "episodic things where you need to see a physician probably on short notice."

But he noted that the centers do have the capacity to monitor simple chronic conditions such as high blood pressure, and that as people got familiar with the system they will begin to use it on a regular basis. "Even, if the long-term or chronic problem doesn't become a common type of patient the acute patient will always be here," he said.

By mid-afternoon yesterday, the Cambridge Health Stop had treated four patients. When working at capacity, it is designed to handle about 70 patients per day.

Since October, Health Stops have opened in Revere, Woburn, Medford, Watertown and now Cambridge. Six more are scheduled to open in the next few months and about a dozen more are in the works. Hachikian said the company expects to lose money for the first year while it builds a patient base, but it plans to expand to a nationwide operation