{"id":606893,"date":"2026-04-26T05:05:15","date_gmt":"2026-04-26T05:05:15","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/606893\/"},"modified":"2026-04-26T05:05:15","modified_gmt":"2026-04-26T05:05:15","slug":"vacant-north-philadelphia-skate-rink-to-become-health-center-expanding-care-access-to-uninsured","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/606893\/","title":{"rendered":"Vacant North Philadelphia skate rink to become health center expanding care access to uninsured"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>A new project in North Philadelphia is transforming an old skating rink into a new comprehensive health center. The health center will be open to everyone, even to those without insurance.<\/p>\n<p>It was the ceremonial wall breaking of what will be the Carman Gardens Health Center, serving residents between Hunting Park and East Tioga.<\/p>\n<p>Brian Clark with <a href=\"https:\/\/gphainc.org\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener nofollow\">Greater Philadelphia Health Action<\/a> says the project will transform the old Carman Gardens Skate Rink into a 22,000-square-foot community health hub.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;We provide primary care for all ages, dental services, behavior health, pharmacy, lab, and we also have specialty, infectious disease, podiatry, rheumatology, endocrinology,&#8221; Clark said.<\/p>\n<p>Clayton Pickens is a block captain who&#8217;s lived in North Philly for 50 years. He believes the health center will be a game-changer for people in the neighborhood who have health challenges related to economics and access.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;We take all insurance, whether you&#8217;re commercially insured, Medicare, Medicaid, and we will see if you have no insurance,&#8221; Clark said.<\/p>\n<p>Doctors say a comprehensive health center is sorely needed here, even though the new health center is just blocks from Temple Hospital.<\/p>\n<p>Josh Klaris with <a href=\"https:\/\/north10phl.org\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener nofollow\">North10 Philadelphia<\/a>\u00a0says, ideally, the new health center will help people stay out of the hospital.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;We should not be going to the hospital for our regular routine checkups. We should not be using the emergency room when we don&#8217;t need to,&#8221; Klaris said. &#8220;I know it&#8217;s going to change the health of this neighborhood.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>It&#8217;s a neighborhood that knows hardships, where basic health care may soon be easier to access. The new health center is slated to open in 2027.<\/p>\n<p>\n          More from CBS News\n        <\/p>\n<p class=\"content__tags__label\">In:<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"A new project in North Philadelphia is transforming an old skating rink into a new comprehensive health center.&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":606894,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[59],"tags":[97,252,253,263765,250863,2085],"class_list":{"0":"post-606893","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-health-care","8":"tag-health","9":"tag-health-care","10":"tag-healthcare","11":"tag-hunting-park","12":"tag-north-philadelphia","13":"tag-philadelphia"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/606893","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=606893"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/606893\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/606894"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=606893"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=606893"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=606893"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}