Claudia Welke, MD

Claudia Welke, MD is a child, adolescent, and adult psychiatrist and the Chief Medical Officer and Co-Founder of Compass Health Center (CHC) and Compass Virtual. CHC is the largest provider of intensive non-hospital based psychiatric care in Illinois, with in-person locations in Chicago, Northbrook, and Oakbrook, IL; Silver Spring, MD; and in virtual settings throughout Illinois. Founded in 2011 with 11 employees, CHC has grown to 600 staff, including 450 clinicians, 50 of whom are psychiatrists and psychiatric nurse practitioners who treat 700 crisis patients per day.

Together with CHC Co-founder David Schreiber, MD, Dr. Welke has built an innovative, transformative model of in-person and virtual partial hospitalization (PHP) and intensive outpatient (IOP) services, with 48 specialized programs for children, adolescents, young adults, and adults. CHC’s mission is to create safe and caring environments that improve access to treatment, keep people at home and out of higher level of care (e.g., emergency department and inpatient or residential facilities), and attain better outcomes.

Dr. Welke attended the University of Illinois College of Medicine in Chicago and completed her psychiatric residency in Adult Psychiatry and a fellowship in Child & Adolescent Psychiatry at the University of California, Irvine. She was the Director of the University of Chicago Fellows for Northshore University Health Systems. Dr. Welke has appeared as a mental health medical expert on WGN 9, Fox News, and in many print and online media sources.