Medical Clinics Serve Patients’ Needs

Total Health Medical clinic in Woodhaven, Queens

There are numerous elementary schools and churches in Woodhaven, Queens, as well as a fire department and volunteer ambulance corps. However, junior high schools, high schools, and large hospitals are non-existent in the southern Queens district. St. Anthony’s Hospital, once found between Woodhaven Boulevard and 96^th street, was demolished in 2001.

Local residents in need of primary health care, including routine checkups, rely on small health centers situated along Jamaica Avenue. One such facility is Total Health Medical, a clinic run by one medical doctor, Afshin Gholomhossani, located at 95-11 Jamaica Avenue, under the J-train’s elevated track and two blocks away from Woodhaven Boulevard.

Less than a handful of patients, some of whom are perusing through magazines stacked in a stand or sporadically glancing at the television on the corner wall turned to the news, are lounging in the waiting area in the early Friday evening. Two medical assistants are chatting with a graying middle-aged man, who stands at the counter before them, between answering phone calls and shuffling through medical records.

The age range of most patients needing primary care at Total Health Medical center are “mostly 50s, 40s and 50s,” medical assistant Kam O’Neil says. “The younger ones don’t like to see the doctors. We’ve had younger ones but they don’t come back.”

The number of insured patients has not declined since the recent economic downfall, despite, according to O’Neil, 26, the fact that health insurance no longer covers certain sonograms required for patients. O’Neil credits the long-standing position of the facility, noting that as the clinic has been “established for a while now,” there is no worry of its closing down.

Given that Gholomhossani’s business cards advertises four clinics he either runs or works for, including the one in Woodhaven, there seems to be no immediate worry of that the clinics will close down.