Milford to build bigger office for Kennedy Community Health Center
4 min read
MILFORD — Soon after functioning a small health treatment heart on Cape Highway for the earlier seven many years, the Edward M. Kennedy Neighborhood Overall health Centre ideas to increase its reach by constructing a more substantial workplace across the avenue.
The Kennedy Wellness Centre, which was launched in a Worcester housing job in 1972, opened its Milford workplace at 42 Cape Road to improve access to principal care products and services and to lessen the tension place on Milford Regional Medical Center’s emergency place.
The 5,000-square-foot overall health centre in the Cape Road Plaza presents Milford citizens with principal and preventative health-related care, obtain to psychological well being specialists, case administration, care coordination, lab company and enable with getting added benefits.
“We’ve been in Milford for very some time with a good number of patients,” said Steve Kerrigan, president and CEO of Kennedy Community Well being. “When I took this job two several years ago, it became extremely clear that there was a will need in the neighborhood for much more principal care expert services but the space we’re currently functioning within now won’t make it possible for for an expansion.”
About two a long time back, the company began wanting for a new house to open up a Milford center and decided previously this 12 months on a piece of land directly across the road from its recent making.
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The new business office — 41 Cape Road — is expected to be three occasions larger sized than its latest centre, reported Kerrigan, or about 15,000 square feet.
The company is in the method of finalizing layouts for the buildout and estimates the cost to construct and equip the inside of the new building to be all-around $4.5 million.
Milford isn’t really the only put exactly where Kennedy Health is expanding. This earlier summertime, it declared a $6.5 million investment in a new, 30,000-sq.-foot business office on Lincoln Avenue in Worcester.
The new Milford middle will be built on an undeveloped plot of land future to a Milford Regional Urgent Care middle. Not only will it let the company to develop its primary care services, but to add on-site dental and behavioral practices, an optometrist and a pharmacy, according to Kerrigan.
The heart options to serve thousands more patients for most important care, explained Kerrigan, introducing that including dental care is critically important to make it additional obtainable for those people in the location. The new pharmacy program will enable sufferers to access low-price tag prescription drugs closer to dwelling, as some patients even now travel as significantly as Framingham to get medications filled, said Kerrigan.
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“Our position as a community health center is to provide quality health care, regardless of what some people can pay and to increase access for people in the group,” he explained.
The new center is slated to open up a yr from now, said Kerrigan, which will help it mark its 50th anniversary.
“Next 12 months will be a significant yr for us,” he stated.
Site function has presently begun to put together for construction, reported Kerrigan. Though Kennedy Health will build the new structure, it will lease from a landlord — the exact same landlord with whom it has a lease at Cape Road Plaza.
“This is a site that’s been tiny but mighty, and they’ve done incredible work there,” Kerrigan said of Kennedy Health’s current locale.
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There are 37 staff members employed at the Milford wellbeing heart, serving 4,639 people totaling 13,555 visits during fiscal 2020, said Bridget Perry, a communications agent for Kennedy Overall health.
In Massachusetts, much more than 1 million inhabitants depend on local community health and fitness facilities as their key care supplier, according to the Blue Cross Blue Protect of Massachusetts. Kennedy Community Wellness Heart is a person of 52 federally certified local community wellbeing facilities in the state.
“Especially for the duration of the pandemic, there was a ton of issues in the overall health care house and problems with overall health treatment shipping products and services and we ended up no various than that,” said Kerrigan.
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In nearly 50 years of operation, Kennedy Health — originally founded as Excellent Brook Valley Well being Middle Inc. — expanded its providers kind Worcester to Framingham and Milford. It has seven school-based health center websites.
Kennedy Health’s Milford workplace, the initially local community wellbeing heart in town, was created with funding from both equally the MetroWest Health and fitness Basis and The Well being Basis of Central Massachusetts.
Lauren Young writes about small business and pop culture. Attain her at 774-804-1499 or [email protected] Stick to her on Twitter @laurenwhy__.
