Boston Health Care for the Homeless Program

Our History

BHCHP’s story begins in 1985 when it first began caring for individuals experiencing homelessness in clinics located at the Pine Street Inn, Long Island Shelter, Boston City Hospital (now Boston Medical Center) and Massachusetts General Hospital and on the streets of Boston.

Earlier that year, Boston, along with 18 other U.S. cities, had a received a grant from the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation to create Health Care for the Homeless programs. A committee, lead by the then-Boston Mayor Raymond L. Flynn and composed of the city’s hospitals and homeless advocates, was tasked with creating a charter for this new program—with a mandate to end the existing fragmented state of medicine for this marginalized population by providing continuity of high-quality health care from street and shelter to hospital to respite care to home. It also provided for a 24/7 respite program (now called the Barbara McInnis House) to care for these individuals who were too sick to return to the streets or shelter, yet not sick enough for an acute hospital stay.

The grant required a medical doctor to manage the care at BHCHP. Dr. Jim O’Connell joined that same year as the founding physician of BHCHP, having graduated from Harvard Medical School and recently completed an internal medicine residency at Massachusetts General Hospital. As a fully credentialed physician at Massachusetts General Hospital, Dr. O’Connell began a tradition of BHCHP clinicians being credentialed at either Massachusetts General Hospital or Boston Medical Center, thereby assuring the goal of continuity of care for our patients within the hospitals.

During that first winter of 1985, the number of people dying on the streets led the Commonwealth of Massachusetts’ Department of Public Health to fund an overnight van run by the Pine Street Inn. Dr. O’Connell joined the van staff two nights each week to comb the streets of Boston seeking to engage “rough sleepers”—those sleeping on street corners, under bridges, down back alleys—by offering sandwiches, hot soup, blankets, clothing, medical care, a smiling face, and a consistent and non-judgmental presence. BHCHP’s street team continues to walk the streets of Boston and to be the medical health presence on the overnight van, seeking out individuals whose struggle to survive each day makes access to our shelter and hospital clinics difficult. The team also makes house calls to newly housed patients to continue their care and advocacy.

The staff at BHCHP work hard every day to provide continuity of care for our patients from street and shelter to hospital and respite care and home.