PHOENIX — Albert Rainey has been in and out of the hospital and, until recently, would return to the street when discharged.
“It’s pretty devastating and nasty,” he said. “No clean clothes. No nothing.”
The 68-year-old Marine Corps veteran suffers from COPD (chronic obstructive pulmonary disease) and has difficulty walking. He has been without a home since his girlfriend died in December, and he lost the apartment they shared.
For the past three months, Rainey has called a medical respite center in downtown Phoenix home. The 50-bed facility is operated by Circle the City, a non-profit organization.
Circle the City has a program called Health Navigators that helps connect patients, like Rainey, to support services before they leave the hospital.
The goal of Health Navigators is to provide patients with food, shelter, and medical care in an effort to reduce hospital visits.
The Health Navigators program started at St. Joseph’s Hospital and Medical Center in 2018 and has grown to include seven hospitals in the Phoenix area.
A Circle the City employee is embedded in each hospital, working with hospital staff to plan for a patient’s safe discharge.
“A lot of times when folks go into homelessness, they lose access to technology,” said Wendy Adams, a community outreach supervisor for Circle the City.
That makes it difficult to access resources. And people who have only recently become homeless often don’t know about the resources available.
The Health Navigators help with everything from arranging transportation to emergency shelters to scheduling follow-up visits with doctors.
They can also connect patients with other services such as rental assistance and food boxes.
The number of people experiencing homelessness in Maricopa County has doubled in the last 10 years. A recent federal survey found about 9,600 people experiencing homelessness in Maricopa County. That’s a 7% increase over last year.
Phoenix has been the subject of national news as it seeks to clean up “The Zone" a homeless encampment just west of downtown where as many as 1,000 people have lived at any given time.
Emergency rooms sometimes become de facto shelters for people experiencing homelessness.
“When you don't know where to go to access medical services, behavioral health services, you're often visiting the emergency department,” said Michelle Pabis, vice president of government and community affairs for HonorHealth.
HonorHealth’s John C. Lincoln Medical Center became part of the Health Navigators program in 2019 after staff noticed a number of people experiencing homelessness on or around the medical campus. They showed up in the emergency room seeking basic care.
Since the program started, emergency room visits at John C. Lincoln have declined from 700 a year to 500 a year, Pabis said.
As for Rainey, getting connected to services once he left the hospital has made all the difference.
At the respite center, he has a bed, clean clothes, and something to eat.
“And it made me healthy again. It made me feel like somebody cares about me,” he said.
Last year, the Health Navigator program served about 2,200 people, the most ever. Circle the City hopes to expand the program even further in the future.
Email ABC15 Investigator Anne Ryman at anne.ryman@abc15.com, call her at 602-685-6345, or connect on Twitter and Facebook.
