Hospitals in the United States were partners in housing developments before the pandemic. As we reported in a post in 2017, Dignity Health in Sacramento, California found that investing in housing reduced the length of stays in hospital. This ought have even more resonance now, as adequate housing has been a key in the COVID emergency response.
The article linked with this post reports on investments by Nationwide Children’s Hospital, which is located in Columbus, Ohio. Kelly Kelleher, the project’s lead, describes thinking about declining neighbourhoods as “patients” and “prescribing” treatments in the form of housing programs that the hospital supports with financial investment. After 10 years of treatment, the neighbourhood around the hospital is safer and more stable. The residents who live there are healthier and have fewer health emergencies. Kelleher also shares how those investments will pay off during COVID.
The potential for hospital investment to make a difference is considerable. As the article’s author relates, 40% of Massachusetts’ spending is on health care. Not all of that health funding could go to housing, but it’s likely to be more the 1% than that state is spending now.
The pandemic also casts a shadow on the hospital’s ability to continue investing. As Dr. Kelleher explains, insurance payouts for COVID-related hospital stays will mean less (and potentially no) funding to continue its investments in housing. For a children’s hospital which focuses on early years, the impacts could have effects for years to come. Read more at reasons to be cheerful: Why Hospitals Are Building Housing
Below: Our post discussing private hospital investments in housing.
In United States, where private enterprise holds sway in the healthcare system, it might be expected that a for-profit hospital would shy away from treating homelessness as a healthcare problem. But if that was once a certainty, it is now no longer the case.
Sacramento, California hospitals, as well as others around the U.S., must toe a profit line. It has forced them to evaluate the benefit of providing housing as a strategy to unclog the medical pipeline. To a growing number of healthcare corporations, contributing to housing for the homeless pays dividends. The housing helps people who are homeless first find, and then remain in, their homes instead of cycling in and out of hospitals over and over again at great cost.
Is it time for single-payer systems, usually administered by one or more layers of government, to consider broadening the scope of supports to the homeless?
Read more in The Mercury News: Northern California hospital is housing the homeless: Will it make a difference?
