CHA Windsor Street Health Center

Apparently WSHC heard the concerns, and took major efforts to get it together! The wait time, which once was often over an hour, was significantly shortened the last few times I’ve been. The staff interactions were far more positive, and they appear to be more organized. Here is a great example of how an establishment can use reviews on Unilocal to identify areas for improvement. Bravo, guys!

Dr Lupton continues to impress me. She has a professionalism and medical awareness to fix my finger when I chop some of it off, advise me on finding specialists who are great, and give me actionable feedback on my wellness. If she is still accepting new patients you should consider her.

My decision to move on from Windsor Street comes after sticking with them for five years. The doctors are uniformly caring and knowledgeable — if you can ever get to see them. I’ve seen any number of them for sick care and they are wonderful! I’ve also had little problem getting same-​day appointments when really ill. However, today I waited an hour and 20 minutes for my appointment as I watched every single person who arrived after me go in — something about only two rooms for my doctor? Sadly, this isn’t the first or even the fifth time something like this has happened. I get that they are probably understaffed and overworked. But I also have to get back to work and, regardless, don’t want to spend my day hanging out in a waiting room.
If you have a good book and time to spare, Windsor Street will serve you just fine. Extra points to the awesome and good-​natured phlebotomists who’ve painlessly taken my panicky blood over the years — those ladies have some serious skills. Meanwhile, sadly, I’m on the hunt for a new PCP.

Do not waste your time with CHA. While their medical staff seems competent enough, the administrative headaches you will have to go through with this office are absolutely awful. I can promise you they will lie to you about your bill, get your bill wrong, not actually send you your bills, and then refer you to collections for bills that you don’t owe. Save yourself a ton of wasted time and money, just go somewhere else.

I want to make it clear that this review is because of the billing office and the parking situation at Windsor Health Clinic. Our daughter’s pediatrician, Dr. Gregory Hagan, is outstanding and I absolutely hate that we’re going to have to stop taking her to such a great doctor because of the incompetence of the administrative department. The nurses are also top-​notch and have always gone out of their way to help us feel comfortable.
But that’s what we’re going to have to do, after receiving bills for services that never happened and being bounced back and forth between billing departments (although to be fair, I think that Cambridge Health Alliance shares some of the blame here).
Also, the building is shared with a youth center and there’s not nearly enough parking, which usually results in us having to spend several minutes circling the block looking for a parking space.

I’ve had great experiences at this clinic over the last 10 years or so. My doctor, Nora Janeway, has been great, and I also had a good experience with Dr. Pigott. When I’ve been there the facilities have been clean and the staff very professional, so I’m perplexed by all the negative reviews. It’s definitely a neighborhood health center, not an upscale clinic, which is part of what I like about it. I was especially impressed to watch the staff deal with people speaking all languages, helping people who are illiterate figure out how to remember their next appointment, and make sure everyone knows their insurance coverage options.
I moved here from Harvard Vanguard and feel like I’ve gotten much better care here: I feel more comfortable, wait times have been really short, and the medical staff have been easy to work with. I thought when I lost my other insurance, I’d get worse care, but the opposite has been true.
I have an appointment there next month, so if it’s mysteriously gone downhill since my last visit, I’ll update!

If I could give this medical facility zero stars, I would. The bottom line is your health should matter to you and as such avoid this clinic. The doctors here are not the problem, the management is. If you have a serious aliment arise, this clinic is not prepared to provide excellent or even mediocre service. I needed additional testing done and it took over a week for the clinic to properly arrange my appointment because they claimed they needed to contact my insurance first and then promptly failed to do so. I had to call repeatedly and talk to many unhelpful people before finding someone to book my appointment and admit to the Clinic’s mistakes. I have had nothing but problems with this clinic. If you are just getting checkups, and don’t mind waiting over an hour past your appointment time to see your PCP, that is one thing. If something serious develops you will end up relying on people who don’t care about their jobs, their temps are constantly leaving, and ultimately their departments will fail to provide the services required to treat you unless you are willing to waste hours of your time insisting they do their jobs. Boston is full of excellent physicians and numerous clinics. Do yourself a favor and fine anyone other than the Windsor Street Health Center.

I also have Dr. Chu, and so far my experience at WSHC has been smooth. It hasn’t taken me too long to make an appointment, get refills, lab results, etc. My only complaints are that the receptionists aren’t the warmest bunch. One was downright rude to me at one point, but as long as I get the medical care I need, it’s whatever. I actually am a receptionist at a doctor’s office and pride myself on my courtesy, so maybe I am being a bit bias. Also, the room where they draw the labs is anything but welcoming. I passed out last time I had them done, and they were apparently «out of juice» so they handed me a hard candy and sent me on my way…
Because I like my doctor and communication with her is easy, I am satisfied. Needless to say, everybody’s view of this place is probably erratic b/​c not everyone has the same doctor. I also have a weird insurance and Cambridge Health is basically the only provider covered, so whatever, it works for me.

I like Jeremy am a little confused about all the negativity. My PCP Dr. Sophia Chu is amazing!
She is so nice, friendly, personable and always can fix whatever aliment I seem to have. She seems to be knowledgeable at just about everything I have seem to come in contact with over the past two years of so.
That includes everything from girl issues, annual checkups, birth control, spider bites (yes I was attacked and am allergic to spiders apparently), strep throat, a broken hand and knee cap, allergies and thyroid issues. She has handled it all and done so in caring manner. I cannot say enough things about her. She is young and seems to really care.
Parking can be tough but there is usually plenty of street parking. I have never had to wait more then 5 or 10 minutes. I have never had to wait more then a few hours for an appointment and if you leave a message a nurse seems to call back promptly. Dru. Chu herself has called me back a number of times and that is so rare today. The front desk has always been friendly.
I had one billing issue because my name was spelled wrong but other then that no issues at all and I am very happy to be a patient here.

This place is disorganized, and while many of the front desk workers are relatively pleasant, they often don’t have their facts straight.
Also, avoid Dr. Gerard Coste – at all costs, no pun intended. I came in with a back injury, in terrible pain and could hardly walk. The medical assistant had pulled up my medical chart on the computer, and he barely glanced at it. Instead, he told me that my pain was purely psychological, that I probably felt «stressed» and that I was probably just coming in «looking for Vicodin because it makes everybody feel good.» Then, he proceeded to tell me he’d write me a prescription for Flexeril. I told him, «If you had read my chart, you would have seen that I am allergic to Flexeril and ended up in the Emergency Room after taking it.» He seemed very inexperienced, defensive, and incompetent.
I’m sure there are some good doctors and nurses there, I’m sure, but overall, not a great experience.

Please, if you care about your time, and your health stay away from this place.
Long story short, it took me over an hour on the phone to book an appointment. I was at the clinic for 4 hours for an issue that should have taken 15 minutes. The first year medical student that saw me was nice enough, but had no idea what she was doing, I don’t blame her. The «doctor» that saw me completely missed the problem, even though I told her exactly what it was. She said everything looked fine and told me to go for pointless tests at the hospital. Right after I left I called Harvard Vanguard, which I would highly recommend, was seen that afternoon, and had the issue taken care of immediately. The Windsor street health center was a complete waste of time and money, and the staff made me feel ignored.

Stumped and confused, I don’t quite understand why most reviews of this place are so negative. I’ve had many trips over to the Windsor Street Health Center and none have been unpleasant in any shape or form.
My doctor there, Dr. Jeremy Keller (
) is excellent and I’ve seen him for check-​ups and various other medical issues, including my shoulder which needed surgery on. He was able to assess it in detail and forward me to one of the best specialists in New England.
The staff is friendly, they’ve never been late on their appointments and the facilities are clean. I have no complaints. My only minor issue was trying to reach my doctor there by phone; I had to leave a message and had to wait for one of the nurses to field my questions instead, a few hours later. It wasn’t bad at all, far from it, but not the same as talking to him directly.
They have parking in the rear of the building, but it is very limited; Street parking on Main Street or in Central Square is easy to find though.

The facility was nice enough, and my doctor was fine, but their business practices are pretty shoddy. I went here about a year ago as a new patient for a physical, and you had to go through this weird process to actually become a patient (it was more than filling out a standard form, you had to use some 3^rd party service).
This year when I tried to schedule a physical (nothing crazy that required a special doctor, just a physical), they said I HAD to see my primary care physician, and that no one else could do it within the time frame i need it (4 weeks). While I am a «little» late in trying to set this up, and would prefer the doctor I saw last time, I just need a physical, that even a nurse practitioner could do. They have at least 10 different doctors there my insurance would cover for this, and there is no reason I couldn’t see one of them if there is an earlier opening. However, the woman i spoke with didn’t even bother to look, she just insisted that I see my primary care physician. Fine then, I will; at different practice.

While the docs are nice, after being a patient for 3 years, I need to leave. It takes forever for them to call in prescriptions, sometimes 3 – 4 days— sometimes never. Every time I call, they are always jammed and I am put on hold. I never get a call back from the doctor herself, only nurses who then relay messages back and forth from the docs, creating a neverending game of phone tag. More often than not, the messages I leave gets mistranslated. (ie, I would like to get any medicine for this except for prenisone… Nurse practitioner calls back saying «I hear you want to get prednisone?»)
I have since left this practice because I was sick of feeling like I was inconveniencing anyone and everyone when I had God forbid called my doctor to either get advice or a refill on a prescription.
This morning I called with bronchitis (which I have had in the past) and I needed to be on my meds as soon as possible to return from work. The nurse, who I spoke to at 9:30am, said she would call back after she spoke to the doctor. At 3:20– I called back, still no doc. When they finally called back an hour later, they said the only way I can get meds for my illness is by coming in in the evening– It would have been much nicer to get a call back sooner than 7 hours later to learn this info!

I went to the WIndsor Street Health Center for a dental appointment and the next day changed my dentist. First of all, they had marked my gender wrong on the chart and spelled my name incorrectly for no apparent reason. I had made an appointment for a cleaning and check-​up but, because they only give 45 minute appointments, all they had time to do here was give me x-​rays which i didn’t even want done really. Now, I have had many dental x-​rays in my life, but these were, by far, the most prolonged and painful. For some reason, the dental assistant had to keep rearranging the x-​ray paper and pushing the film at awkward angles into my mouth, which cut my mouth several times. The dentist later told me that the assistant had also forgotten to tell me to take my nose ring out which could have caused the whole procedure to have to be redone.
When I finally saw the dentist, for about 10 minutes, she was quite friendly and told me I had to get some fillings redone and my wisdom teeth out. She gave me a referral to get my wisdom teeth out but the sketchy place they referred me to only takes walk-​ins which would have meant, she reaffirmed, that I’d have to walk into this place and maybe or maybe not be put under and have my teeth pulled. sketchy. Also, because Windsor Street Health Center only gives limited time appointments, the fillings I had to have redone would have to be spread out over three sessions, each of which takes one month to schedule behind the next. And she said I would probably always see a different dentists since they’re continually rotating. So she said she would give instructions on the chart that she hoped the next dentist would follow. Sketchy!!! No way!!! I changed my dentist ASAP.
In conclusion: Avoid if possible.

A great facility for all in the community, offering physical and mental health, dentistry, family planning and nutritional services. Built in the mid ‘90s, the design of the building is not outstanding but signage makes it easy to navigate. Geared towards minorities, many of their staff members are bi or multilingual speaking Spanish, Portuguese, Bengali, Urdu, French, Vietnamese and Hindi. The registration desk is particularly helpful and patient. I saw Dr. Agnes Graves and she was fantastic. Communicative and caring in a casual but immaculately clean environment.
If you’re like me and read everything in sight when waiting, from the ingredients on any bottle to all the names of all visible equipment, pamphlets are scare so I’d bring along a mag for your purse. My new obsession: GOOD. It’s $ 20 and goes not to the publishers but to a non-​profit of choice. Plus they have interesting, progressive thought provoking articles. Read it.