Dispatch — visit, hours, location, what to bring

How to find us

Suite 211 is on the second floor of the brick building at 1432 W Superior Street, on the south side of the avenue, between 14th Avenue West and 15th Avenue West. The ground-floor tenant is the East Hillside Post Office and an independent printer. The entrance to Suite 211 is a green door immediately west of the post-office entrance; it is labelled Chronograph Family Practice · 211 in vinyl on the inside of the upper window. The stairs go up one flight; we are at the top of the stairs.

Parking and transit

Free street parking on Garfield Avenue (run perpendicular to Superior; one block from us) and on 15th Avenue West. Street parking on Superior is one-hour metered between 08:00 and 18:00. The Duluth Transit Authority 23 bus from downtown stops at the corner of Superior and 14th Avenue West. The 5 stops at Garfield and Superior. Both buses run every 20 minutes on weekdays.

The Aerial Lift Bridge is four blocks east. The Lake Superior Maritime Visitor Center, in case you have time before your visit and would like to look at the lake first, is six blocks east. Northern Waters Smokehaus on the Canal Park side, also recommended, is a fifteen-minute walk.

What to bring to your first visit

A government-issued photo ID and your insurance card (we don't bill it; we still want to know what plan you are on so we can be useful at the next stop in your care).
A current medication list, including supplements and over-the-counter medications. If you have the bottles, bring them.
A list of allergies and reactions.
Records from your prior primary-care provider if you can get them at the time of the visit (we will request them on your behalf if you sign a release at intake; the prior provider has 30 days under HIPAA).
A list of the questions you want answered. We will read them aloud at the start of the visit and we will not run out of time.

What to expect

The first visit is 90 minutes. It is, on most days, the longest first visit any of our members has had in a primary-care office. We take a careful history, examine you, run any in-office labs we can run on the day, write down the questions you brought and the questions we have, and end with a written plan that you take home. The plan is on stationery; it has your name on it; it has the splits we expect for whichever lane you are in.

If you would like a tour of the office before the visit, ask Lena at the front desk. We are not embarrassed by the photocopier.

Our neighborhood

The West End of Duluth — sometimes called Lincoln Park, sometimes called the West End depending on whom you ask — is one of the older commercial corridors in the city. The buildings on this stretch of Superior Street were mostly raised between 1898 and 1924; the brick is local; the windows are original on most of the upper floors. We chose the location because the rent is reasonable, the street parking is free, and the bus access is good — the practice is meant to be reachable by members who live anywhere in the city.

The block is also home to a number of small businesses we are happy to live near: Frye Brothers Gallery at 1438; the West End Tavern at 1422; Duluth Coffee Company's roastery on the Garfield side. If your visit runs short and you want to make use of the time, any of those is a five-minute walk.

Reaching us

The practice line, (218) 727-0413, is staffed during business hours by Lena or Cassidy and is forwarded to the on-call clinician's mobile after 18:00 (13:00 on Saturdays) until 22:00. Members have a separate cell number for their clinician on file at intake; that cell is the fastest way to reach us during business hours. For non-urgent questions, the practice email front-desk@chronograph.example is checked twice daily.