LOS ANGELES (AP) — Public agencies and private health insurers are teaming up to create a system of street doctors and clinics that will provide medical care, including routine preventive care, to homeless people in Los Angeles, officials announced Wednesday.
Dr. Samir Amin, chief medical officer for LA Care Health Plan, a Los Angeles County agency that provides health insurance to low-income people, said the goal is to ensure homeless residents have access to their primary care physicians on a long-term basis, rather than sporadic visits from under-resourced street health teams, which struggle to schedule follow-up appointments and ensure patients pick up their prescriptions.
Officials with LACare Health Plan and Health Net, two health insurers, said the effort will receive $90 million from the state over the next five years.
Los Angeles County is the most populous county in the U.S. with a population of approximately 10 million. According to federal statistics for 2023, more than 10% of the U.S. homeless population lives in this county.
In Los Angeles, where more than 45,000 people suffer from serious mental illness, drug addiction or both, living in trash-strewn encampments and blocks of rusty campers, the spread of homelessness has a cascading effect on drug overdose deaths, particularly from the synthetic opioid fentanyl.
One of the largest cities in the country, with a population of about 4 million, the number of homeless people living in the city is roughly the same as the population of Palm Springs, and providers hope to serve up to 85,000 homeless people.
Of the funding, $60 million will be used to bolster field health programs across the county and serve residents living in encampments, shelters and temporary housing, while the remaining funds will be used to bolster services in Downtown Los Angeles' notorious Skid Row, homeless encampments that are plagued by the city's health system, including a new health campus scheduled to open in 2025.
“We are extending our opening hours for specialist medical care and extending our opening hours for more urgent services,” Amin said.
A mobile medical team from Wesley Health Center made the rounds on Skid Row on Tuesday, passing people lying in tents, tarps and blankets. The team offered HIV and sexually transmitted disease testing, psychiatric services and referrals for other medical care such as dental and vision care, said Marie McAfee, Wesley Health's director of operations. She said the center can see 50 to 100 patients a day.
Norma Terrazas, 46, said she was grateful the clinic came to her home to have her blood pressure taken.
“This is Skid Row and we need help, we need all the help we can get,” she said. “They're making sure our health is OK, that our bodies are strong and that we can handle whatever is coming our way right now.”
Health Net's Martha Santana Chin said she's excited about the possibility of providing more cardiology, orthopedic and other specialty care to Skid Row residents, and plans are in the works for a free shuttle to bring patients to the facility, as transportation is a major barrier to care.
The money comes from California's Housing and Homeless Assistance Program, which Gov. Gavin Newsom has threatened to withhold from cities and counties in 2022 after citing disappointing homelessness reduction proposals. LA Cares provides 70% of the funding.
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Hur reported from San Francisco.
