Whitman-Walker Clinic

Whitman-Walker Health (formerly Whitman-Walker Clinic) in Washington, D.C.

Whitman-Walker Health (WWH), (formerly Whitman-Walker Clinic), is the largest nongovernmental HIV/AIDS health care organization in the Washington, D.C. metropolitan area. It has historically served a primarily LGBT clientele. Founded as a health center for the gay and lesbian community in 1978, Whitman-Walker was one of the first responders to the HIV/AIDS epidemic in DC and became a leader in HIV/AIDS education, prevention, diagnosis and treatment. In recent years, Whitman-Walker has expanded its services to include health care services for the entire community regardless of HIV status, sexual orientation or gender identity.

WWH is named for gay poet Walt Whitman (a former D.C. resident) and Dr. Mary Edwards Walker, a noted Civil War-era physician in the District and women's rights activist.

Operations

Whitman-Walker Health provides a number of health care services to the D.C. metro area, including primary medical care, HIV/AIDS primary care, dental care, mental health services, legal help, medical adherence services and a pharmacy. Its main facility is the Elizabeth Taylor Medical Center located at 1701 14th Street, NW in the Logan Circle neighborhood of Washington, D.C. WWH also operates the Max Robinson Center in the primarily African American and poor Anacostia neighborhood in Southeast D.C.

Whitman-Walker Health produces the annual D.C. AIDS Walk (held in October).

History

1970s

Whitman-Walker was founded in November 1973 as the Gay Men's VD Clinic, part of the Washington Free Clinic. In 1976, it split off as an independent organization and hired its first full-time staff. The Clinic was chartered by the government of the District of Columbia on January 13, 1978. In 1981, Jim Graham became the clinic's president.

1980s

The Whitman-Walker Clinic's former medical facility located at 1407 S Street, NW.

In 1983, WWC launched its AIDS Education Fund to provide information and counseling to people with AIDS, an AIDS information hotline, and an HIV/AIDS prevention advertising campaign. In 1984, WWC opened its AIDS Evaluation Unit, the first gay, community-based medical unit in the nation devoted exclusively to diagnosing and evaluating patients suspected of suffering from AIDS. WWC opened its first housing unit for patients with AIDS in 1985, to provide destitute, homeless patients with a place to live while receiving treatment. The AIDS treatment center expanded rapidly, and became a full-time clinic in 1986 recognized throughout the region for its cutting-edge and comprehensive HIV and AIDS treatment. It also purchased a new building, located at 1407 S Street, NW (formerly the Evelyn Towers Apartments), for $1.25 million—a facility which would operate as the organization's headquarters for more than two decades. At this time, D.C. Mayor Marion Barry and the Eugene and Agnes E. Meyer Foundation were the Clinic's primary financial supporters, although individual contributions from the local GLBTQ community made up about half the organization's income.

Whitman-Walker faced its first financial crisis in 1986. The rising cost of health insurance for its staff and physicians, coupled with very high insurance premiums for those involved HIV/AIDS work, threatened to force the clinic to close when it could not purchase insurance. The D.C. City Council attempted to pass legislation adding the Clinic's staff to the city health insurance plan, but the bill died. The Clinic eventually found insurance, however.

WWC soon began to expand again. In 1987, Whitman-Walker opened its first dental clinic for patients with HIV and AIDS. Its staff expanded to 34, it opened its first food bank, and it hired its first full-time lawyer to provide clients with legal services related to AIDS discrimination. But in 1988, as Whitman-Walker expanded its services throughout the D.C. metropolitan region, it encountered significant resistance and setbacks. WWC initiated its Northern Virginia AIDS Project in 1987. But the Clinic was unable to find space for its operations for some time. In one case, the Clinic was denied housing by a landlord who allegedly did so out of fear and/or homophobia. The landlord claimed the Clinic had not met certain leasing and payment requirements, and a judge agreed. WWC eventually found other space and built the Whitman-Walker Clinic of Northern Virginia.

1990s

Whitman-Walker Clinic faced another financial crisis in 1990. Once more, insurance costs were the problem, and once more the City Council backed a plan to subsidize the clinic's health insurance costs. Although the City Council approved the plan, Mayor Marion Barry vetoed the bill and the Council was unable to override. The Clinic was able to find insurance once more, albeit at very high prices. A major grant-writing campaign led to the infusion of more than $3 million in grant funds in 1991, helping to reinforce the Clinic's finances. The same year, First Lady Barbara Bush made a highly publicized visit to the clinic, opening its Bill Austin Day Treatment Center.

The Whitman-Walker Clinic's Elizabeth Taylor Medical Center

In 1992, Whitman-Walker Clinic opened its Max Robinson Center in Southeast D.C. and the Whitman-Walker Clinic of Southern Maryland. The Clinic's expansion efforts, however, caused conflict with some other service groups. For example, in 1993 WWC applied for a million-dollar HIV/AIDS grant from the District of Columbia. WWC competed for the grant against a coalition of primarily African American service and outreach groups. The Clinic won the grant, angering some community leaders and activists who felt the city had discriminated against black organizations in favor of the white-led Clinic. Local community leaders also opposed the Clinic's expanding housing program, fearing for the health and safety of their communities.

Whitman-Walker Clinic also adopted oral testing for HIV in 1993 before most major AIDS clinics in the U.S. The following year, WWC built the Elizabeth Taylor Medical Center, named in honor of actress and AIDS activist Elizabeth Taylor. The building's opening ceremony was attended by Taylor and pop singer Michael Jackson.

In 1995, the Clinic established a program under which patients could sell their life insurance policies to the organization in exchange for an annuity. Critics claimed that Whitman-Walker would benefit only if its patients died, making this a conflict of interest. Its 1997 AIDS Walk was its most profitable ever, with about 25,000 people helping to raise $1.7 million.

Recent leadership turnover and financial difficulties

Whitman-Walker Clinic has suffered from a number of personnel issues in the late 1990s and 2000s. In 1993, WWC's new director of clinical services was found to have falsified a résumé. The Clinic's Board of Directors initially refused to fire the physician, but was forced to do so a month later after public outcry.

Long-time WWC director Jim Graham departed the Clinic in 1999 to run (successfully) for the D.C. City Council. Since then, the organization has had significant turnover among its leadership. Graham's replacement was Cornelius Baker, an HIV-positive civil rights and HIV activist. But only a year into Baker's tenure, WWC announced it was suffering from significant financial problems, which led to the closure of several programs and facilities. The District of Columbia is heavily reliant on Whitman-Walker Clinic to provide a significant amount of its HIV/AIDS testing and outpatient treatment. Clinic officials blamed the financial crisis on the District's exceedingly high per-capita rate of HIV and AIDS, the collapse of several major fund-raising ventures (including the bankruptcy of the AIDS Ride and much reduced attendance at the AIDS Walk), rising meth addiction (which often leads to higher incidents of HIV infection), and overdependence on government grants and funding rather than private insurance. To combat these financial trends, the Clinic began charging for some services in 2003. But the changes did not help. Baker resigned as executive director of Whitman-Walker Clinic in December 2004, telling the Washington Blade that the Clinic's financial difficulties had negatively impacted his health and citing other personal reasons for leaving.

The search for Baker's replacement was a lengthy and difficult one. During the search process, Whitman-Walker continued to hemorrhage money. The Clinic sold a Northern Virginia group home for AIDS patients, shuttered the Whitman-Walker Clinic of Southern Maryland, closed several substance abuse programs, and shut its food bank. In May 2005, the District of Columbia government announced that the Clinic had overcharged the city $2 million for services. Rather than risk its government funding, the Clinic was forced to immediately repay the money, creating severe financial pressures. Staff were not paid for a month, and layoffs and program cuts occurred in August. Liquidity issues became so severe that WWC warned the public that it might close. The City Council quickly passed legislation speeding up city payments to the Clinic (which had lagged during the city's own financial crisis), and awarding new emergency grants to the organization to keep it afloat. The surge in funds going toward Whitman-Walker deeply angered many other AIDS and minority groups, who felt the Clinic was being rewarded for its mismanagement simply because it was "too big to fail." The Clinic continued to make changes and cuts throughout 2006. Accused of having an unwieldy, over-sized Board of Directors, the Clinic reduced the size of its board, laid off staff, and restructured lines of authority. In January 2006, Whitman-Walker announced a turnaround plan to refocus its work away from solely providing care to people with HIV and AIDS and adding health care services unrelated to HIV/AIDS. The plan would also focus on providing health care to entire families rather than just individuals.

On March 13, 2006, the Whitman-Walker Clinic Board of Directors announced it was hiring Donald Blanchon to take over as chief executive officer on May 1. Blanchon was formerly chief executive officer of Maryland Physicians Care (a managed care health plan in Maryland) and vice president for Medicaid and Medicare programs at Schaller Anderson (a medical management firm). Blanchon quickly announced his support for the Board's turnaround plan. A week later, Whitman-Walker Clinic announced it would sell its two properties on 14th Street and the Max Robinson Center in Anacostia and seek to build new, larger medical treatment facilities in the two respective areas by 2009. These actions were intended to stabilize the Clinic's financial condition. But just four months later, Blanchon fired two long-time leaders of Whitman-Walker Clinic, leading to renewed concerns that the Clinic's financial and personnel issues had not been resolved. On January 11, 2008, Blanchon said the Clinic had almost completed its transformation into a primary care medical organization. WWC hired Dr. Raymond Martins, assistant clinical professor of medicine at the Georgetown University School of Medicine as its new chief medical officer, purchased and installed a state-of-the-art computerized patient record-keeping system, and outsourced its financial management department. Although Whitman-Walker also laid off an unspecified number of employees due to the outsourcing, Blanchon said the Clinic was still the area's largest provider of HIV/AIDS education, prevention and treatment. The Clinic also said it was suspending plans to sell all of its existing buildings in order to finance a new, high-rise medical center. WWC announced in January 2008 that it would receive funding from the D.C. Primary Care Association which would enable it to keep its buildings on 14th Street NW. The Clinic said the tentative funding agreement would shutter the Max Robinson Center in Ward 8 and open a new, larger facility in Ward 7.

Few of Blanchon's plans came to fruition. In June 2008, the Clinic sold its long-time headquarters at 1407 S Street NW to The JBG Cos. for $8 million and moved its administrative staff into the Elizabeth Taylor Medical Center on 14th Street NW. The Clinic, whose operating budget had fallen 17 percent since 2007 to just $20 million a year, cited $5 million in debts stemming from mortgages on its existing buildings. The Clinic closed its on-site laboratory and closed the last of its food banks. The October 2008 AIDS Walk was the Clinic's most successful in several years, however, raising $700,000. By year's end, the clinic had served about 10,000 patients, of whom 3,400 were HIV-positive. Nonetheless, WWC's finances continued to worsen. Government reimbursements for medical care had not kept pace with inflation, donations had dropped by 29 percent, sales of medical services had decreased, and the number of patients without insurance had risen. To cope with these problems, WWC closed the Whitman-Walker Clinic of Northern Virginia (which still served more than 1,100 patients), closed its residential addiction treatment center, and laid off 45 employees. WWC also outsourced its pharmacy operations to Maxor National Pharmacy Services Corporation (a privately-held, for-profit pharmacy management company based in Amarillo, Texas), and closed its mental health telephone hotline. WWC staff were devastated at the news. "I thought that once we got the [S Street] building sold, we'd be stable," Patricia Hawkins, a former associate executive director of the Clinic, said.

Whitman-Walker Clinic's continuing financial difficulties led to political problems for the organization in 2009. D.C. Councilman David Catania blasted Blanchon and the Clinic's senior staff of "gross negligence and malfeasance" at a public forum in January 2009. He specifically accused WWC of closing facilities in Maryland and Virginia without seeking financial assistance from public health authorities, an accusation some laid-off staff echoed. He also questioned why WWC would reduce staff at the still-unsold Max Robinson Center when that part of the city is suffering hardest from the HIV/AIDS epidemic. Catania also accused the Clinic of an anti-gay bias for laying off three lesbian senior managers, and of abandoning its ties to the city's GLBTQ community. Former staff members agreed. "Mr. Blanchon has a whole different vision for what the clinic should be, and those of us in the GLBT community are heartbroken," a former WWC associate executive director told the press.

The WWC Board of Directors requested that the law firm of Arnold & Porter and contractor Huron Consulting Group conduct an audit to review Catania's charges. Although the audit did not appear to substantiate Catania's charges, Catania accused Arnold & Porter of a conflict of interest because James J. Sandman, chairman of Whitman-Walker's board, was formerly employed by the firm. Blanchon strongly denied all the accusations.

The D.C. Council Committee on Health, which Catania chairs, set a hearing on the issues for April 27, 2009. On March 24 and April 20, Whitman-Walker turned over 2,000 documents to Catania for additional review. Council member Jim Graham, who led the clinic from 1984 to 1999, supported the decision to hold hearings. Sandman, now chief counsel for the D.C. public school system, resigned rather than testify before the D.C. Council.

See also

• Healthcare in the United States
• Healthcare in Washington, D.C.
• HIV/AIDS in the United States

References

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External links

• Whitman-Walker Health
• Jim Graham Papers Finding Aid, Special Collections Research Center, Estelle and Melvin Gelman Library, The George Washington University