New Integrated Care Clinic in Baltimore Named After Former APA President

A certain symmetry attended the opening of the Mosaic Community Services’ health care center in Baltimore City’s Charles Village neighborhood in May. The recently renovated facility was named after Steven Sharfstein, M.D., a former APA president who began his career in a community health center and said he was contemplating finishing it out as a practicing psychiatrist at Mosaic’s new integrated care clinic.

Aaron Levin

The center treats 2,000 patients with a combination of addiction, pain management, mental health, and primary care services and plans to care for up to 4,000 following further renovation.

Sharfstein announced in January that he would be stepping down after 25 years as president and CEO of the Sheppard Pratt Health System, Mosaic’s parent organization. The new site is just one of 38 mental health facilities that Sheppard Pratt operates in Maryland, most of them developed or acquired during Sharfstein’s tenure.

At the naming ceremony last month, Baltimore City Health Commissioner Leana Wen, M.D., M.Sc., recalled how she first became familiar with Sharfstein’s work on community mental health centers when she was in medical school. Collaborative care offers yet another exemplary model for treating people living with mental illness today, she said.

“Nothing exists in a vacuum,” said Wen. “We can’t treat people for addiction without also attending to their mental health. We also can’t treat their mental health without attending to their underlying physical conditions and their access to food and employment and education, or without talking about the social determinants of health and community care that Dr. Sharfstein has so long been concerned about.”

“This site is a model of collaborative care,” Sharfstein said. “In one location, patients can receive psychiatric outpatient services but also much more: substance abuse specialty services, primary care, and social services like supported employment, housing, case management, and other services as needed.”

During the ceremony, Sharfstein recalled how early in his career he had served as the first primary care physician in a then-pioneering integrated care clinic in Boston. He went on to build up the mental health service there, a key step in his career as a community psychiatrist, he explained.

Over the course of his career, Sharfstein has witnessed stark changes in the American mental health system, he said.

Sheppard Pratt was once a mostly inpatient hospital admitting 1,000 patients a year with an average length of stay of 80 days. Today, it records 10,000 admissions annually for an average of 10 days each.

“We still provide acute psychiatric care and crisis stabilization, but we also developed a hospital-without-walls program, continuum of care, day programs, and more outpatient programs,” Sharfstein said.

Sharfstein said that he has no intention of retiring after leaving his CEO position at Sheppard Pratt. He has always remained active in patient care, and in his post-CEO life, he imagines working part time at the Charles Village Mosaic center, a 10-block walk from his home.

“I would like to work with patients with serious and persistent mental illness, working collaboratively with primary care doctors and social workers and nurses in a setting just like this,” he said. “It would be a great way to end my working career, because that’s how I started. I see it as bookends to my working life as a psychiatrist.” ■