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Community
Benefit at Partners

Improving Care and Managing Costs through Health Care Reform

Addressing Health Care Disparities

Health Center Collaborations—Cost Effective Care in the Appropriate Setting

Efforts to Improve the Health of Women

Caring for Women and Children Affected by Domestic Violence

Preventing and Responding to Substance Abuse Among Youth

Creating Economic Opportunity

Services for Homeless
Adults

Improving Access and Care for People with Disabilities

Community Partners

Jim O’Connell, MD, President of Boston Health Care for the Homeless and MGH Physician, cares for Boston's homeless population.

Partners has multi-dimensional and long-term relationships with organizations that serve homeless people in Boston. In collaboration with these organizations, Partners provides: clinical care in hospitals, shelters, a medical respite care facility, and on the street (Boston Health Care for the Homeless and Pine Street Inn); workforce development (Project Hope); care for homeless veterans (New England Shelter for Homeless Veterans) and help for homeless women (Women of Means). Homeless patients experience high rates of illness and

death.They routinely face the most severe health risks from exposure to the extremes of heat and cold, trauma, violence, complex and chronic medical illnesses, persistent mental illness, and substance abuse.

Boston Health Care for the Homeless

The Boston Health Care for the Homeless Program (BHCHP) provides comprehensive health care to over 9,500 homeless men, women, and children annually in over 70 shelter and community and hospital sites, including Boston Medical Center, Massachusetts General Hospital (MGH), and Lemuel Shattuck Hospital. Partners, and especially MGH, has a deep and long-standing relationship with BHCHP. In 1985, MGH became the first private hospital in the nation to host a BHCHP clinic.

The BHCHP clinic at MGH seeks to offer continuity and consistency of quality health care to homeless persons by engaging individuals directly on the streets and in shelters, and following them in primary care and specialty clinics, in the ED, and throughout inpatient hospitalizations.

In 2008 the renovation of the former Mallory Institute of Pathology was completed and dedicated as Jean Yawkey Place. This new facility now houses the program’s administrative offices, an expanded 104-bed Barbara McInnis House, and the BMC Clinic that integrates comprehensive medical and mental health care with a state-of-the-art dental clinic and a pharmacy. This renovation was accomplished with funding from varied national, state, and city sources, including $2.5 million from Partners HealthCare.