Be Well Medical Center’s New Owners Continue Dr. Benson’s Legacy of Care

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The neighborhood doctor who cared for Michigan's LGBTQ+ community through the AIDS crisis is gradually handing his practice to the resident he once mentored

Dr. Mark Bornstein (l) and Dr. Paul Benson. Photo: Andrew Potter

Sarah Bricker Hunt

Published: July 30, 2026 | Last Updated: August 3, 2026

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When Dr. Paul Benson opened Be Well Medical Center in Berkley on Dec. 1, 1980, modern medical imaging was still in its infancy, and the disease that would shape much of his career didn't yet have a name. Within a few years, he was petitioning the local hospital where he had admitting privileges to treat HIV patients and watching families beg doctors to leave AIDS off death certificates out of shame. He earned a nickname in return: "the dirty AIDS doctor."

"I was one of the first to treat HIV in Michigan, and that was a lot different back then," Benson says. "People were not living with the disease. They were working to get by from one Christmas or one birthday to the next." The stigma, he says, was "horrific," worse than anything the Covid pandemic later brought. "I've had people in the hospital back then that would die of pneumocystis pneumonia and have to call a family member that didn't even know that they were in the hospital, let alone had AIDS."

That loneliness has stayed with him. "I can't tell you the number of times that I would have to call a family member and say, 'Your son is in the hospital, he just passed away,' and they never knew he was gay, they never knew he had AIDS," Benson told Dr. Joe Kort, a Ferndale therapist, on Kort's podcast "Smart Sex, Smart Love" earlier this year. "I think that person died experiencing a lot of loneliness. And if they had supportive family, were out and open at that time, I really believe the results would be different."

Kort, who's counseled LGBTQ+ clients since the 1980s and is a Be Well patient himself, told Pride Source that Benson filled a role few other doctors would touch. "My clients would tell me, I have a regular doctor and I have a gay doctor, and the gay doctor was always Dr. Benson," Kort says. "There are things I can't share with my regular doctor that I can share with him. He was a safe haven, all the way from back in the day." As HIV treatment evolved through the decades, Kort says he leaned on Benson's expertise for his own clients. "He was like the go-to, and I just always referred to him because he was such a good source and a good reputation."

Not every memory from that era is grim. Benson recalls treating gay men whose relatives had once been hostile toward the LGBTQ+ community, only to soften after watching him care for a brother or son with compassion. "They came and really thanked me for it," he says, "and it probably gave them a reversal about how they feel about LGBTQ, once somebody in their family had come out as being gay and living with AIDS."

Online 3 Be Well2026 AP 4 — Dr. Paul Benson. Photo: Andrew Potter

Benson traces his own foundation in LGBTQ+ health to a 1980 rotation at the Haight Ashbury Free Medical Clinic in San Francisco, at the height of the city's gay rights and HIV crisis years, training that shaped how he'd go on to treat STIs and care for LGBTQ+ patients back home. Confronting death up close as a young doctor, he says, is what made him a better one. "It made me a better physician because I immediately had to deal with death," Benson says. "Being a young doctor and being able to deal with patients on death and dying really helped me become a more empathetic physician."

Along the way, Benson built a reputation for being first. Be Well was among the first Michigan practices to offer rapid HIV testing, and when mpox surfaced in Metro Detroit in 2022, Benson again moved quickly. He held one of the area's first mpox vaccine clinics for high-risk patients and treated some of Oakland County's earliest confirmed cases, pushing publicly for wider vaccine access as the state worked through a limited supply. He's served as principal investigator on more than 200 HIV clinical trials since 1980, including a recent study published in the New England Journal of Medicine, work he credits with helping bring many of today's HIV medications to market.

Handing off, but not stepping away

Longtime Between The Lines readers — Pride Source’s print publication — are surely familiar with Dr. Benson and Be Well, one of Between The Lines' first advertisers. Flip through the ads in virtually any issue over the past 30-plus years, and Be Well is among them. "Being a part of Between The Lines has always been a very effective way to reach the community," he notes.

Benson Early Advertising — A Be Well Medical Center ad set for print in the early years of Between The Lines. Photo: BTL archives

For the past several months, Benson, 72, has been gradually handing Be Well over to Dr. Mark Bornstein, 35, the resident who rotated through his office as a medical student and never really left. Bornstein has taken over as the doctor most patients see day to day and will become full owner of the practice over time, while Benson keeps seeing his own longtime patients part-time and stays active in the office. "I'm not retiring and going away," Benson says. "I've had a number of patients I've been taking care of for over 40 years, and I'm going to continue taking care of them as long as I can, as long as they want me to. But it's time for me to turn the reins over to a new generation."

Some things at Be Well haven't changed at all. A golden retriever named Bowie, and before him, another golden named Baxter, has spent nearly two decades greeting patients in the waiting room and occasionally ending up on his back for a belly rub mid-appointment. Benson has also watched the practice's welcome extend to families in ways he didn't expect in 1980. "I'll see young adolescents come in with mom and dad, with support," he says. "Back then, I don't think that's something I ever would have seen." He's watched the community's regard for him shift, too. He describes his early practice as a time when he was frequently shunned by fellow physicians and avoided by residents, a sharp contrast to today, when Be Well maintains a waiting list of students who want to train there. He's also become a familiar face around town, recognized in public from his local media appearances, including by a City Hall clerk last year who lit up meeting him in person. "I thought that was kind of neat," he says.

A new generation takes the reins

Bornstein first walked into Be Well as a third-year medical student on a family medicine rotation he didn't choose. "In the end, it was the best rotation I had," he says. "I was always looking for something that was of advocacy within medicine, and this practice area was something I'd never really been a part of before." A Berkley High School graduate, he left Michigan for New York, training at Mount Sinai to gain specialized experience in HIV care, gender-affirming care and LGBTQ+ health, work he said the state didn't yet have the infrastructure to teach. He and Benson stayed in touch through residency, and when Bornstein finished his training, Benson made him an offer.

"It seemed only natural that him and I talk about bringing him into this practice," Benson says. He'd fielded interest from other buyers over the years, including private equity groups, and turned them all down. "That absolutely was not what I wanted to happen," he says. "I wanted it to be the same atmosphere as the one that we currently have. I'm very, very proud that I'm able to keep my legacy up, keep the practice the same and service our community."

Online 2 Be Well2026 AP 11 — Dr. Mark Bornstein. Photo: Andrew Potter

Bornstein, a family medicine physician who has built his own expertise in reproductive medicine, women's health and transgender care, doesn't take that trust lightly. "I'm really fortunate to be able to take this practice into the next chapter, while at the same time honoring everything that he's done," he says. "He's really built this from the ground up. I feel like I'm standing on the shoulders of giants." He's candid, too, about what he didn't live through. "I wasn't around when things were probably as bad as it gets with HIV," he says. "There's some things I'll never be able to understand. I want to acknowledge that and thank my patients for sharing what they have with me."

Patients who've watched the handoff up close describe it as seamless. Kort says the warmth that defined Benson's practice hasn't gone anywhere under Bornstein. "I never have a bad experience, ever," Kort says. "Everybody's warm. Everybody goes out of their way to be nice, and I love Dr. Bornstein."

Both doctors describe Be Well as closer to a neighborhood practice than a specialty clinic, with LGBTQ-affirming care sitting alongside pediatrics, family medicine and an on-site pharmacy. Bornstein estimates that roughly 30% of patients don't identify as LGBTQ+ at all. "We still consider ourselves an LGBTQ+ practice, but it's a wonderful thing to really be both a primary care community practice and an LGBTQ+ center," he says, pointing to the waiting room as proof. "You might have a person who's 70 years old and very wealthy, and you might have somebody who's living on the street, and then you might have somebody who's trans. That type of diversity is really helpful in fostering a welcoming place."

Next up for Be Well is a return to a tradition Benson started decades ago and paused during the pandemic: quarterly in-person gatherings for patients living with HIV, catered and open to guests. The first, on Aug. 4 at Como's in Ferndale, will include a talk from Benson on cancer prevention and screening and one from Bornstein on clinical trial opportunities at Be Well.

What sticks with Benson most, after 45 years, isn't a single case or a single first. It's the follow-through. In 1985, a married man came in as a new patient with his wife and infant daughter, telling Benson he'd contracted HIV from an injury on a basketball court. As the baby slept nearby, the man asked what his goal for him should be. "I said, 'Our goal is that you walk your child down the aisle and you be healthy for it,'" Benson recalls. Two years ago, the man returned with a photo of himself doing exactly that. "We had tears in both of our eyes when he gave that to me," he says.

It is stories like this one that make it impossible for Benson to completely leave the practice. "I'm still going to be here for a while,” he says. “I'm still going to be around."