Anderson helps lead Annapolis’ new Morris Blum health clinic

Like many in Annapolis, Dr. Claudia Arumala has a Faye Anderson story that makes her smile. Arumala is the family physician at the community clinic recently opened inside the city's Morris H. Blum Senior Apartments, where Anderson is the case manager. The doctor, who started working in Annapolis in August, was treating a shy male patient when she suddenly had to leave the room. When she returned, the patient was chatting with Anderson like an old friend.

Like many in Annapolis, Dr. Claudia Arumala has a Faye Anderson story.

Arumala is the family physician at the community clinic recently opened at the city's Morris H. Blum Senior Apartments, where Anderson is the case manager. The doctor, who started working in Annapolis in August, was treating a shy male patient when she suddenly had to leave the room.

When she returned, the patient was chatting with Anderson like an old friend.

"I said 'Why didn't you tell me what you said?' and he said 'Oh, because you are a woman,'" Arumala said. "I said 'What does that make Faye? Is it because she is wearing scrubs?'

"That's how easy she is to talk to."

Anderson's sympathetic and attentive ear makes her the face of the Anne Arundel Medical Center Community Clinic.

The clinic is part of one of five health enterprise zones established by the Maryland General Assembly and run in partnership with AAMC, the city government, and the Housing Authority of the City of Annapolis.

Anderson seems an unlikely torchbearer. The 62-year-old is softspoken and shy, slouching into her chair and wringing her hands during conversation. She says she does not like talking about herself, and you believe it after 15 minutes.

A longtime Anne Arundel County resident and health care worker, Anderson knows many of the people the clinic hopes to reach. Beyond her case work, she does everything from stocking supplies to taking out the trash at the clinic.

"When people visit it, particularly first-timers, they are seeing a familiar face, someone that's known in the community," said Vincent O. Leggett, CEO of the Housing Authority.

Anderson moved from New Jersey to live with her grandmother on the Broadneck Peninsula when she was 13 years old. Her grandmother and aunts were nurses; her mother was a respiratory therapist at a veterans hospital in East Orange, N.J.

Anderson's first nursing job was alongside her grandmother at the former Crownsville State Hospital, a facility for the mentally ill.

She worked the adult male patient ward on her second night at the hospital.

In 1987, AAMC hired Anderson as a nurse in its special care unit. She eventually helped AAMC run a breast and cervical cancer screening program funded by a grant from the state Health Services Cost Review Commission.

Anderson became the coordinator of outreach services at the Annapolis Outreach Center, the free clinic attached to the Stanton Center.

When AAMC decided to create a primary care clinic at the Blum building, Anderson applied to be the office's case manager. The clinic opened Nov. 14.

Under the health enterprise zone program, Annapolis' 21401 ZIP code is one of five areas that will receive about $4 million a year in state funding to reduce health disparities.

AAMC and the Housing Authority hope the clinic will reduce the number of emergency room visits and 911 calls from the Blum building.

Last year the 911 calls from Blum numbered more than 220.

So far, patients have been slow to schedule appointments at the new clinic. Some have not switched their primary care to the practice. Others need an informal consultation or have health insurance not accepted by the clinic.

"We have patients that have not decided to use us as their primary care, but have come in because they needed to talk to someone," Anderson said.

Anderson is one reason people are coming in, said Wanda Stansbury, the Housing Authority's director of health and human services.

"It was very important to the opening and developing of this clinic that we had somebody like her," Stansbury said. "I don't know too many other people in the community like that."