A new clinic-style private health center opened in Cambridge yesterday, part of the latest innovation in the country's fastest growing kind of health care.

Since '1980, more othan 1,000 private health centers offering inexpensive, walk-in care for non-life-threatening ailments have opened across the country. Proponents of the system attribute the centers' success to their low cost, long hours and the fact that they don't require an appointment.

The Health Stop Medical Center at 2067-2095 Mass. Ave. near Porter Square is the fifth center the company has opened in the Boston area since the beginning of October.

"I'm convinced that the whole field of for-profit health care is going to grow very much." Health Stop President Kenneth V. Hachikian '71 said yesterday.

Centers such as Health Stop offer walk-in treatment for routine medical and surgical emergencies--such as, stitches--which until recently were treated in hospital emergency rooms or doctors offices.

"In a few years we may not have every hospital on every corner with a licensed emergency room," added Dr. Joseph G. Maloney '71, chief medical director and vice president of Health Stop.

"We have a system that is full of mismanagement," he explained, adding. "We have a system that has too many hospitals and far too many emergency rooms."

Challenge to Hospitals

The emergence of private health centers poses a marketing challenge to hospitals, many of which are already operating on tight budgets, and has caused many to rethink their role in the community.

City-owned and Harvard-affiliated Cambridge Hospital currently operates nine neighborhood health centers, and administrators there acknowledge that facilities like Health Stop are a source of competition.

"That's a little different product from what we're selling," Associate Administrator for Professional Services Michael J. Ryan said recently. But he noted that some people targeted by the neighborhood centers might also decide to use the private facilities, and he said the hospital is stepping up its advertising.

"It used to be that everything was word of mouth and it was considered beneath a physician or hospital to advertise," Ryan said, adding. "They are going after a piece of the marketplace in a way that 10 years ago their office peers would have thought was patently unprofessional."

"There is a growing emphasis on making health care...more like the rest of the world," Ryan explained.

Edna Homa, chairman of the Cambridge Health Policy Board which oversees the city-owned hospital said yesterday. "Cambridge is relatively under-served by what I would call everyday run-of-the-mill primary health care."

"Health care here is too high class; the middle class is pardon my French, getting screwed. The high class is the offices and clinics [Harvard affiliated] at the Mt. Auburn [Hospital] and then there are the neighborhood health clinics and nothing in between," she explained. "People should be critical of what they get and a little competition is good," Homa added.