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West Roxbury could get one of those insta-care clinics

Walgreens is going to try to build something still rare in Boston: A for-profit urgi-care clinic at its store at 1999 Centre St. in West Roxbury.

The chain will explain its proposal to use some of the store's current space in a Zoomed meeting at 6 p.m. on March 23.

Unlike in surrounding suburbs, such clinics remain rare in Boston.

The city has a number of non-profit community health centers, but also, Tom Menino vociferously opposed the for-profit clinics and managed to keep them out completely. In contrast, neighboring Dedham, a fraction of Boston's size, now has two.

Marty Walsh didn't feel as strongly, but his years saw little movement of the clinics into Boston. The first, in fact, was in West Roxbury, just down the street from the Walgreens at the Star Market plaza on Spring Street, but it only lasted a few months before closing up.

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Comments

Growing up in the 80s, our pediatrician ran a practice from an office in his basement. And they would see you off-hours if it was urgent. Does this exist any more, and would it count as a for-profit urgent care?

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Looking forward to the anti-everything crowd in West Roxbury claiming this is some type of secret place for rampant hard drug use by communist cyclists.

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I always wonder how they stay in business. Go in CVS (just up the street) and there will be dozens of people shopping. Go in this Walgreens and maybe there will be 4 other shoppers. And it's like that ALL THE TIME!

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I usually go to the West Roxbury CVS once a week and there's always people there. If there are things I can't get at CVS, I'll get them at Walgreens, but that Walgreens is usually empty.

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I can't tell you how many times I've done telehealth for myself or my family with someone at our health center, which is within walking distance from our house, and have been told to go to urgent care to get a particular procedure/test done. I then remind them we don't really have those, especially for minors. Several of the providers don't live in Boston, start looking on the list they have, and are like "OK which of these are near you? Danvers? Framingham? I'm not really familiar with Boston neighborhoods..."

F anyone's I, the BIDMC urgent care accessible by the Chestnut Hill T stop does see minors. People have reported super transphobic and ableist experiences there though.

We definitely could use urgent cares all through the city. I'm unclear why our community health centers don't have either urgent care departments or actually ability to book same-day sick appointments when they're saying you need to be seen ("we do do those, but they fill up first thing every morning").

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I know that there was a lot of FUD over the idea of urgent cares causing terrible problems, but I don't know that that ever was a reality. I've experienced them to be tremendously helpful where they're available. Have a medical problem on a weekend that isn't ER-level, but that will get significantly worse if it's left to Monday (generously assuming you can get seen promptly on Monday), and urgent care is the perfect solution. They're also great when you're traveling.

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Urgent care would also be incredibly useful to those of us who need valid documentation of an illness to give to the Employment Gods who require such documentation to prove we are taking our sick time because we are actually sick. I was ill recently with what I'll delicately call a tummy bug. I mostly felt fine, but had good reason to stick close to the bathroom. Dutifully called my local health clinic to make an appointment so I could prove I was ill, and naturally was told that there were no times available that day or any day within the next week. Told by a nurse to stay home, stay hydrated, take an Imodium pill. Which had already been my plan. My supervisor had suggested that I go to an urgent care center and yeah, we don't have those here.

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When my ears were blocked and I didn't need ER care, I would go to the MinuteClinic at the CVS in Porter Square in Cambridge. They were quick (20 minutes from sign-in to visit), and even if they couldn't take care of the entire problem, it was enough until my PCP could see me.

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The MinuteClinics are great, but they don't do as much as a typical urgent care. Urgent care can do x-rays, casting, sutures, some amount of lab work, chest pain/difficulty breathing, which the MinuteClinic doesn't do.

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When I went there for impacted earwax (mainly from listening to headphones), MinuteClinic wasn't able to complete the job for fear they would burst my eardrums. They did do enough to get them semi-unblocked until my PCP was able to finish the job.

There was an urgent care clinic in Cleary Square that was part of the Faulkner Hospital (HealthStop?) eons ago that did the same thing as you described.

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