On the corner of Northeast Knott Street and 33rd Avenue stands a neighborhood stalwart. It’s called Family Medical Group NE. The other day, Dave, who lives a few blocks away, stood under his blooming magnolia tree and recalled the sinus infections, blood draws, and annual checks that have been bringing him to this place for more than 40 years.
“Convenient, nicely run,” he says of the clinic. It had labs, X-rays—all the basic stuff so you didn’t have to drive around town. If you needed urgent care on Saturdays, maybe you didn’t get the doc you wanted but, hey, at least it was open, and the care was reliable. One time, Dave recalls, he was fishing and a misstep caused him to lurch, such that his walking stick jammed into the ground and torqued his arm. At first, he doubted his doctor’s analysis that he’d torn a tendon. “It turned out he was absolutely right.”
Not long ago, a big company bought Family Medical Group NE. Then a separate clinic, also newly acquired by that big company, closed up shop and folded into Family Medical Group NE—boosting, for its time, the clinic’s ranks of physicians…