Las Vegas offers post-hospital care for homeless in yearlong test

The city of Las Vegas has embarked on a yearlong pilot program intended to address a serious predicament for homeless people after they are released from a hospital: Where do they go to heal?

Nursing an open wound or broken arm, recovering from heart surgery or managing conditions such as diabetes is a difficult task on the streets.

Marce Casal, the CEO of Well Care Services, which works with Clark County and the state to provide myriad services to homeless people with behavioral health issues, said it goes even further than precarious outdoor elements.

Antibiotic prescriptions might go unfilled without insurance or an ID card and, even if they were filled, the medicine could get stolen, Casal said.

City officials and social service providers say that traditional health care systems are not equipped to address the range of complex issues faced by those experiencing homelessness, so it is too common for discharged patients to find themselves cycling in and out of medical centers.

“What happens when it’s time to discharge them?” Casal asked. “They can’t live in the hospital.”

Matter of ‘life or death’

In an effort to answer that question, city officials have set up a respite care facility in a building at 1581 N. Main St., which they say only required minor rehabilitation to get ready, just northwest of the city’s Courtyard Homeless Resource Center near downtown.

The facility is monitored by a registered nurse and certified nursing assistant around the clock, a paramedic is on site during the day five times a week and a doctor is there “often,” said Jocelyn Bluitt-Fisher, the city’s community services administrator.

The City Council recently approved a $1.4 million contract with a California-based home care agency to provide health care staffing services during the yearlong trial because officials expect to need more personnel as the number of patients and level of required care go up. The site is not intended to treat patients with COVID-19, but it maintains two isolation beds in case someone shows symptoms.

The facility began accepting patients in late August, starting with roughly a dozen, and this month it is expected to expand to its full capacity of 38 beds, said Kathi Thomas, the director of city community services.

“On a granular level, this is life or death for some people,” she said.

But to also address the underlying causes of homelessness, a team of intake specialists and two caseworkers ensure that patients receiving post-hospital care have access to social support services, the key to this effort, such as help finding affordable housing, city officials say.

It is a $4.3 million operation, paid for with federal dollars including CARES Act funding, according to a city spokesman. The cost accounts for operations for 12 months and the building rehabilitation.

“Nothing like this exists in Southern Nevada,” Thomas said about a city-run operation. “We’re stepping into a space that other folks have not stepped into because we know we need to fill that gap.”

Need is ‘huge’

Merideth Spriggs, founder of the homeless outreach agency Caridad, said she was aware of a similar federally funded county program managed by HELP of Southern Nevada, but she called the city’s efforts “a great idea” that will cut down costs in the long run.

Spriggs worked at the San Diego Rescue Mission about a decade ago, when its unprecedented program to offer recuperative care to the chronically homeless began, and she recalled how it was less expensive for hospitals to help fund the program than to eat the expenses in treating the uninsured.

Casal said the need is “huge” and he called the city’s plan “a great concept” to marry medical and social services. His agency offers both under one umbrella to reduce hospital readmission rates, and he said he can testify to its effectiveness.

“That’s an actual solution for that problem versus the Band-Aid,” he said.

Contact Shea Johnson at sjohnson@reviewjournal.com or 702-383-0272. Follow @Shea_LVRJ on Twitter.