After-Hours Urgent Care Visits Stable, But Administrators Remain Concerned

Over the summer, Harvard University Health Services' after-hours urgent care clinic moved from the Smith Campus Center to its current temporary location in the Law School's Pound Hall.

Despite the move, the urgent care center has received a number of visits comparable to last year. However, administrators say they continue to worry about the current location’s accessibility to students since its relocation in June.

The relocation is a result of ongoing construction to the Smith Campus Center, which administrators said could cut off utilities in the building after regular business hours.

“Having after-hours urgent care [at Pound Hall] is a constant concern, in terms of setting up a barrier that might prevent students who are either physically ill, mentally ill, or drunk—who don’t get there when they should get there,” HUHS Director Paul J. Barreira said.

Harvard University Health Services Director Paul J. Barreira in his Smith Campus Center office. By Megan M. Ross

This academic year, the number of after-hours urgent care visits on nights, weekends, and holidays at Pound Hall has remained relatively unchanged from last year when it was located in the Smith Campus Center, according to data provided by HUHS. In total, 3,298 Harvard affiliates visited the after-hours clinic between Aug. 23 and Nov. 30, from the beginning of freshman orientation through the end of fall classes. Undergraduate visits totaled 1,606.

Last fall, during a similar period spanning the fall semester, HUHS recorded 3,324 urgent care visits outside of normal hours, 1,739 of which were by College students.

While the data may suggest the relocation has had a minimal impact, Barreira said HUHS has received concerns from individual students, the Freshman Dean’s Office, and House staff about the difficulty of locating Pound Hall—especially at night. He said HUHS administrators had heard of instances in which students used Uber, the ride-sharing mobile app, to get to the clinic.

“What we have to reconcile is the individual experience and group data,” Barreira said. “I’m gratified that the numbers have looked close to the same in this site, but I’m also mindful that students are reporting they find a barrier.”

Maria Francesconi, director of HUHS Health Promotion and Education, agreed.

“Our numbers may look the same, but the experience of getting to it is going to be so different,” she said.

In response, HUHS has tried to improve signage around Harvard Yard and information on its website for students, including photos that show the entrance and maps with the building’s location.

“When they have to go over there at night, they don’t know the space over there,” Barreira said. “The building is not easy to recognize; the entrance to it is even more difficult.”

HUHS chose Pound Hall—which is also the Law School’s daytime HUHS clinic—as the location for after-hours urgent care because of its close proximity to the College’s student body and because the building already possessed a license from the Massachusetts Department of Public Health.

Barreira said the Smith Campus Center construction has disrupted HUHS operations beyond the relocation of urgent care services. Some of its administrative resources have had to move to other University buildings, and the Sexual Health and Relationship Counselors, a College peer counseling group, was displaced from its office, as well.

“Construction is a huge, huge issue in ways that you see and don’t see,” Barreira said. “The one you see is urgent care.”

Barreira confirmed that HUHS intends to move after-hours urgent care back to the Smith Campus Center when construction is completed in the fall of 2018.

HUHS after-hours urgent care in Pound Hall is open from 5:30 p.m. to 7:30 a.m. on weekdays and 24 hours on weekends and holidays.

—Staff writer Menaka V. Narayanan contributed reporting to this story.

—Staff writer Kenton K. Shimozaki can be reached at kenton.shimozaki@thecrimson.com. Follow him on Twitter @KentonShimozaki.