Greater Cincinnati Behavioral Health Services adds primary care to its list of services
Greater Cincinnati Behavioral Health Services (GCBHS) has long helped those with mental illnesses, addiction and related challenges. But in the fall of 2025, GCBHS took a step forward in helping its clients become healthier in all aspects of their lives—it began offering primary care.
“Our mission is mainly centered around helping those with the most severe and persistent mental illnesses and addiction in our communities to essentially live a healthier and more productive and fulfilling life,” says Jeff O’Neil, president and CEO.
GCBHS is the largest community health center in Greater Cincinnati, with offices primarily in Hamilton County but with additional offices in communities like Wilmington, Lebanon, Milford, Amelia and Batavia.
“We operate a lot of services. Everything from sober living homes to crisis receiving center to standard outpatient care to group homes—we provide a wide array of mental health services. We offer case management, we offer peer support, employment recovery services, psychiatry services, counseling—it kind of goes on and on and on. Pretty much anything that you can think of that is in the spectrum of mental health we offer, which is why we’re so excited to recently be offering primary care as well,” says Dr. Katherine Schmidt, chief medical officer.
GCBHS had previously partnered with another organization to provide primary care and recently began providing the service in-house as part of its integrated care initiatives. GCBHS’s primary care services officially launched Sept. 2, 2025.
“For a person with schizophrenia or other serious mental illness, the mortality rate is two to three times the normal population. In most studies, patients with schizophrenia or other serious mental health conditions live 10 to 25 years less than a person without one of those conditions,” says Amy Van Milligan, associate medical director. “The hope is that when they come in, we can try to take care of behavioral and physical health needs as well as psychiatric med needs kind of all under one roof. And it also allows us to talk to each other, which makes life much easier when I can just send a quick internal email or Team’s message to a patient’s treating psychiatrist.”
In addition to making it easier for the medical team, offering these services under one roof makes it easier for patients as well.
“I think they’ve been really excited to be able to get all their health care needs met at a location they’re already familiar with. For many patients it can be anxiety producing to go elsewhere, especially some of the bigger clinics,” says Van Milligan. “I think they’ve been incredibly receptive.”
Currently, primary care services are offered full-time at its Madison office and part-time in Amelia. As of April, more than 800 patients had signed up for primary care, with a combined total of more than 1,400 site visits. GCBHS hopes to expand primary care services to its other sites over time.
“The goal would be that anybody that comes here for services can get their both their physical health and their mental health or behavioral health needs met here and that we would have that amount of capacity here to meet those demands,” says O’Neil.
