Charter Oak Health Center was founded in August 1978 by a few tenants of Hartford Housing Authority’s Charter Oak Terrace Rice Heights Apartments. Tenants of the housing authority’s site decided to create a health clinic in a two-bedroom apartment based upon barriers that prohibited them from receiving health services at a nearby hospital. For over 40 years, Charter Oak Health Center has continuously provided community-based primary health care to residents in the greater Hartford area.
Key individuals who were instrumental in developing and running our organization were tenants of Charter Oak Terrace-Rice Heights which was a Hartford Housing Authority development. Tenants were able to get a local physician to volunteer their time to medically treat tenants.
Since the founding of the health center, Charter Oak Health Center has grown from a two bedroom clinic to a 60,000 square foot health center facility in Connecticut’s Capital City. Presently, the health center provides health care services at three satellite locations in Hartford, one in Bloomfield, five School Based Health Centers, six homeless shelters and operates a mobile medical and dental van. The health center has received the Gold Seal of Approval by the Joint Commission and was recognized as an FTCA Deemed Facility. In 2019, Charter Oak Health Center provided medical services to a total of 19, 358 patients. In February 2020, Charter Oak officially opened a state-of-the art Specialty Care facility at our 32 Grand Street location. We were recently recognized nationally as a Patient-Centered Medical Home from the National Committee for Quality Assurance (NCQA) and in August 2019, COHC was recognized nationally as an exemplary practice by the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) at the CMS Transforming Clinical Practice Initiative (TCPi) Exposition in Baltimore, MD. This was due to the health center’s benchmark performance around reducing unnecessary Emergency Department utilization obtained through expanded urgent care hours.
A private, non-profit Federally Qualified Health Center with over 40 years of experience providing medical, dental and behavioral healthcare to some of the Hartford area's lowest-income residetns -- regardless of their ability to pay. Our main office is located at 21 Grand Street in Hartford, CT. Additonally, COHC operate satellite offices at 401 New Britain Avenue in Hartford and 693 Bloomfield Avenue in Bloomfield, two School-Based Health Centers at Parkville Community School and A.I. Prince Technical School, five homeless shelters and a mobile medical and dental van.
In May 2020, Charter Oak Health Center will expand their Urgent Care Department hours until Midnight, Friday through Sunday to meet the needs of the community and further decrease unnecessary Emergency Room utilization.
