Patricia M.C. “Patty” Brown was ready to retire early nearly five years ago, or so she thought.
The health care regulatory lawyer had wrapped up a 30-year career at Johns Hopkins Medicine in 2019 when she agreed to become a part-time senior adviser for a Boston startup.
Months later, as a novel virus began infecting millions of people and sending them into quarantine, the company’s central premise took on unexpected significance. Medically Home was commercializing technology that allows acutely ill patients to be hospitalized in their homes, following a model of care created over the years at Hopkins.
“I was in retirement. I was going to do some consulting … and suddenly COVID hit,” Brown said. “The idea of hospitalizing patients in their homes during COVID took off.”
Brown strongly believed in the “hospital at home” model, developed in the geriatrics department at Hopkins, where she served for more than a decade as senior vice president of managed care and population health. At Hopkins she had also been president of Johns Hopkins HealthCare, the insurance arm, and senior counsel of Johns Hopkins Health System.
The “hospital at home” model works for “people [who] don’t want to go to the hospital, don’t have to and shouldn’t. You can do so much in the home,” Brown said. “It’s a complete transformation of health care delivery, from facility-based orientation to home and community-based orientation.”
By the end of 2020, the federal Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services launched a national program authorizing hospitals to offer at-home care, and more than 350 facilities now either offer or seek to offer the option. Brown believes that 30% to 40% of hospital admission ailments can be treated or monitored at home.
With a legal, not medical, background, Brown had long viewed her mission as helping to improve patient and community care by shaping health systems and policy. Those were her goals at Hopkins and Medically Home, where she’s still a senior adviser.
More recently, the 64-year-old Severna Park resident has found yet another outlet, in January taking on the role of vice president of payor strategy at Kennedy Krieger Institute. The Hopkins affiliate specializes in treating children with cerebral palsy, Down syndrome, spina bifida and other diseases, injuries and disorders.
She has been tasked with helping to develop a research-backed next-generation model of care for Kennedy Krieger. That entails working with insurers to put in place policies designed to cover treatments and caregiving that patients need.
It’s not surprising to those who know Brown or even to herself that she hasn’t slipped quietly into retirement.
“It was always a part of me that I knew I was here to work, that’s what we’re here to do,” said Brown, who grew up in a Catholic family in Lutherville and graduated in 1978 from Maryvale Preparatory School, where she now serves as board chair. Her upbringing and high school education was “all about being there for others.”
For Brown, that has meant carving out a parallel career in community service, starting when she was in her 30s, busy with a full-time job and, with her husband, raising her two stepdaughters.
Currently, she’s a member of the board of The Center Club, the private business club at the top of 100 Light Street in downtown Baltimore, and treasurer for Listening Hearts Ministries, a group developed by her husband, Joseph Gill, that teaches the practice of spiritual discernment.
One of her first such roles began more than two decades ago when she helped develop a women’s business leader initiative for United Way.
“Many of us became friends around [a] common passion of trying to help and give back,” said P.J. Mitchell, a retired vice president of global sales operations for IBM who also worked on the United Way initiative. Since then, “we hitch each other along to whatever we’re working on at the time.”
Mitchell, a Center Club past president and current board member, described Brown’s leadership style as “collaborative and compassionate.”
“People are just naturally drawn to her as a leader, whether it’s accomplishing business objectives or in support of a civic cause and volunteerism,” Mitchell said. “She’s just brilliant at leveraging the power of teams.”
Since retiring from Hopkins in 2019, Brown also has chaired Maryvale’s board, and recently led the search for a new president that led to the hiring of Malika DeLancey, the first person of color to lead the school. Brown’s goal is to ensure that the school continues offering “a loving environment focused on teaching young girls to be leaders.”
Brown, whose family also owns a condo in Federal Hill, became involved with the Center Club because of the importance she places on having a city gathering spot where business leaders can work together.
“I walk into the Center Club, and I see modern Baltimore at its best,” Brown said. “I see young people, old people. …You walk in, you see diversity everywhere. That’s what our future city is. It’s got to be this complete sense of one community.”
Patricia M.C. “Patty” Brown
Age: 64
Hometown: Bronx, New York, through age 6; Lutherville
Current residences: Severna Park; Federal Hill
Education: Maryvale Preparatory School; University of Richmond, B.A. political science and sociology; University of Baltimore, J.D.
Career highlights: Vice president of payor strategy, Kennedy Krieger Institute; senior adviser, Medically Home; senior vice president of managed care and population health, Johns Hopkins Medicine; president of Johns Hopkins HealthCare; senior counsel of Johns Hopkins Health System; assistant attorney general, Maryland Office of the Attorney General for the Department of Health and Mental Hygiene
Civic and charitable activities: Chair of the board of Maryvale Preparatory School; board member, The Center Club; treasurer/board member, Listening Hearts Ministries; member of board of trustees, Health Services for Children with Special Needs, a managed care plan owned by Children’s National Hospital in Washington; former chair of United Way of Central Maryland
Family: Married to Joseph Gill; two stepdaughters; one grandchild
