Outer Cape Health Services Provincetown Health Center
When the nearest hospital is one hour away, a primary- and urgent-care facility like the Provincetown Health Center takes on extraordinary importance. Though Outer Cape Health Services is now affiliated with the Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center, its history can be traced — in the person of Patti Cozzi, R.N., among others — to the Provincetown Drop-In Center at 6 Gosnold Street.
With her husband, Ciro; Lenore Ross and Pat Shultz; John Snow; and Francis Zampiello, Cozzi incorporated the Health Associates of Provincetown Inc. in 1972, the second year of the Drop-In Center operation. In 1982, two years after the closing of the Drop-In Center, HAPI built this facility. Five years later, HAPI merged with AIM (Association for Improving Medical Resources of Cape Cod, based in Wellfleet) to create Outer Cape Health Services, or OCHS — an acronym with special appeal for a New York Times staff member. Cozzi is a lifetime member of the Outer Cape board.
Outer Cape was targeted by Act Up in 1989 for its failure to provide aerosolized pentamidine for those with pneumocystis pneumonia. Today, through Beth Israel Deaconess, it offers on-site specialty care from pulmonology and infectious disease physicians for those patients with H.I.V. and AIDS. Another indication that Outer Cape Health deals with some specialized circumstance is the fact that it prominently includes among its urgent-care services: “Fish hook removal.”
• Assessor’s Online Database ¶ Posted 2013-01-20
Building Provincetown 