Our Values
We are committed to being trustworthy and reliable and to authentically living our values.
- Respect: We are committed to respecting each other and to value unique qualities, backgrounds, and perspectives.
- Compassion: We are committed to helping our patients, their families, and each other, with kindness and understanding.
- Patient-Focused Care: We are committed to partnering with our patients and communities to improve their health and well-being.
- Innovation: We are committed to adopting technology to remove barriers to care and continuously improve the patient and staff experience.
Our History
We were an unlikely idea at first. Still, a group of community members of the Baltimore Gay Alliance, healthcare providers, and the Baltimore City Health Department worked together to fund, establish, and open a small clinic for gay men. They were awarded a grant of 10,000 from the Centers for Disease Control & Prevention to get started.
Whether it was a surprise that everything came together, we can’t say. But in May 1978, with the ever-memorable ‘Gay Health Clinic’ as our name, we opened to the public operating out of a space in the Metropolitan Community Church on St. Paul Street in Baltimore.
Staffed with a couple nurses and doctors, a coordinator, and several volunteers, Chase Brexton was open for only two hours two nights a week and our few services were free (donation suggested, to help pay for supplies).
Some relocations and staff changes later, by the mid-1980s we found ourselves to be among a limited number of providers on the frontlines of a new epidemic that would become known as HIV/AIDS.
It made sense that we took this challenge on. We’d been founded to meet a need that was not readily or safely available, and we grew to meet a need that was dire.
The work was challenging for our teams. Monthly memorials were held to remember the patients who’d died. We created a Wall of Courage for loved ones to honor those they’d lost to AIDS.
By 1990, we had renamed our organization – Chase Brexton Clinic (named after the street corner our building was on). We were providing primary care for our patients in treatment for HIV and addressing needs beyond health with case management. And, in 1995, we opened a pharmacy to help manage the medications that our patients needed for their intensive HIV treatment regimens. (By the way, this first pharmacy was in a storage closet!)
Throughout this crisis, we saw another crisis firsthand: the need for compassionate, quality healthcare for those who were uninsured and lacked access to care for a multitude of reasons.
We were able to respond, adding general primary care, behavioral health, substance use treatment, and women’s health services.
Chase Brexton’s passion for our communities and all who need us drove us to be better and offer more.
The first historically-LGBT health care organization to become a Federally Qualified Health Center (1999); seeking and first receiving Joint Commission accreditation in Ambulatory Care and Behavioral health (2001); implementing an electronic patient record system in 2003 (long before most); a founding member of Priority Partners; a National Committee for Quality Assurance recognized Patient Centered Medical Home. we continually challenged ourselves to provide not only compassionate, welcoming care, but care that meets the highest quality standards.
The first two decades of the 2000s, Chase Brexton added four locations. Served as the provider of care at Maryland Institute, College of Art, for many years. We added dental care, OB/GYN, and more.
Chase Brexton’s founders sparked a mission that grew to serve tens of thousands and will do all we can to continue to provide outstanding patient-centered care that supports and inspires our patients and communities to experience their healthiest possible lives.
