GBMC Health Partners opens first primary care clinic in Baltimore

GBMC Health Partners unveiled its brand-new primary care practice that now assists Helping Up Mission (HUM) in providing primary medical care and comprehensive recovery assistance for men fighting addiction, poverty and homelessness in Baltimore’s Jonestown neighborhood.

In early 2020, GBMC expanded their services to offer care to members of the broader community.

Since June 2019, GBMC Health Partners, a multi-specialty medical group of GBMC-employed providers, has delivered advanced primary care to more than 500 of HUM’s clients with significant healthcare needs and more than 1,500 alumni, who are encouraged to maintain their recovery and remain accountable through the HUM Alumni Program.

The GBMC Health Partners team manages the care of HUM clients who have been diagnosed with chronic disease, reaching out to them to ensure they have a plan and are following it. The team connects patients to specialists when needed, including master’s-prepared behavioral health consultants, substance use consultants, and psychiatrists.

GBMC Health Partners partnered with HUM, a nonprofit that helps members fight addiction and homelessness with comprehensive recovery programs for substance abuse and poverty, when they needed a partner that would be able to care for their growing number of clients. Most of the men who come to HUM have not had adequate healthcare or continuity in their care for years, and many have lived on the streets for long periods of time.

For more than eight years, GBMC has been at the forefront of comprehensive primary care in the region. It is committed to the vision of becoming a community-based system of care by transforming the healthcare delivery system and revolutionizing the patient care experience with an advanced primary care model, which it utilizes in 11 primary care sites throughout Baltimore and Harford Counties.

Through its partnership with HUM, GBMC Health Partners is bringing its advanced primary care model, that is more about building relationships with patients than the number of visits, to Baltimore City. What makes this relationship even more special is it brings GBMC back to its roots; the site of GBMC at Helping Up Mission once housed the Presbyterian Eye, Ear & Throat Charity Hospital, one of GBMC’s founding institutions.