By Xenia Shih Bion, California Health Care Foundation, November 18, 2019
In the course of a single year, a homeless man named Steve in Phoenix, Arizona, visited the emergency room 81 times. Only 54 years old, Steve is coping with a daunting array of medical conditions: multiple sclerosis, cerebral palsy, heart disease, and diabetes. Because of his health and reliance on emergency rooms, his medical costs averaged about $13,000 per month that year.
Thanks to an innovative housing program run by the nation’s largest health insurer, UnitedHealth Group, Steve no longer sleeps outside — a crucial prerequisite to improved health. He is one of about 60 formerly homeless people covered by Arizona Medicaid who now receive housing and support services in Phoenix, John Tozzi reported for Bloomberg Businessweek. The UnitedHealth housing program, called myConnections, represents the growing recognition across the health care system that improved health cannot be achieved exclusively by traditional clinical models. Getting patients off the streets is often the first — and most important — step to helping them heal, physically and mentally.
“Patients like Steve wind up in the ER because they don’t fit into the ways we deliver health care,” Tozzi explained. “The US system is engineered to route billions of dollars to hospitals, clinics, pharmacies, and labs to diagnose and treat patients once they’re sick. It’s not set up to keep vulnerable people housed, clothed, and nourished so they’ll be less likely to get sick in the first place.”
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