Howard Brown Health Clinic will soon open doors on North Side, specializing in LGBTQ+ care

CHICAGO (WLS) -- A massive new healthcare clinic is coming to the North Side.

The Howard Brown Health Clinic will soon open its doors in Lakeview and serve as one of the few places that specialize in LGBTQ+ health.

They gave an exclusive tour to ABC7 Chicago.

Quotes from patients will be all over the five-story building, helping to solidify how seriously Howard Brown takes patient care. Once fully operational, they'll be serving 23,000 patients a year.

The building is 76,000-square-feet; has 38 exam rooms and 12 dental chairs; and it's all surrounded by city views.

"We needed this building to address access; patients couldn't get appointments on the North Side," said Katie Metos, with the Howard Brown Health Clinic.

Appointments, on average, would be a three-month wait. But that's changing now.

"The specialty care here is dental and then two floors of primary care, lab services," Metos said.

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Metos, who is vice president of external affairs, gave ABC7 a tour of the new five-story Howard Brown Health Clinic on the corner of Halsted Street and Cornelia Avenue, where one floor has more exam rooms than the entire old building just a few blocks down.

"We serve folks that have insurance, are public insured or do not have insurance," Metos said.

It's about serving everyone because Metos knows all too well what happens when the LGBTQ+ community goes underserved.

"My friend and colleague went in and sought care, and they said I'm a non-binary person," Metos said. "They left the clinic in pain and bleeding because of the way they were treated."

All doctors at Howard Brown are HIV-certified, and most are family physicians. So that means kids are welcome too.

"We serve patients from every zip code in the city of Chicago," Metos said.

The building includes mental health services, with a Walgreens connected to it, all to make it that much easier to be seen and heard no matter your identity.

"We want folks to be able to be seen. They deserve to have access and answers to their questions," Metos said.

The building will officially open on Friday, and the appointment books are already full.