NYC Health and Hospitals Corporation advances strategy to house homeless patients
Misty Severi
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The New York City Health and Hospitals Corporation announced that it planned to hire an outside organization to help the city’s homeless patients find housing. The move would help slash expensive visits to the emergency room.
The finance committee of the Health and Hospitals Board of Directors voted Monday to approve a contract with Coordinated Behavioral Care. The contract will need to get full board approval later this month. Coordinated Behavioral Care is a nonprofit consortium made up of behavioral health organizations.
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The contract claims that the consortium will help patients find and apply for apartments within its living price range. The group will also provide them with furniture and supplies upon move-in and accompany them on viewings. The goal is to house 400 people per year and work with approximately 600 people on a rolling basis. However, this number is just a fraction of the nearly 50,000 homeless patients that needed help last year, according to Politico.
Health and Hospitals already has its own housing initiative, and it houses 500 homeless people annually, but the nine-month process usually falls on social workers. If fully approved, the new contract would be for four years and would expand on the existing Housing for Health initiative. The contract is part of Democratic New York City Mayor Eric Adams’s housing blueprint unveiled last year.
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Patients who experience homelessness tend to visit emergency rooms three times more often than patients who have housing. They also stay in the hospital three times as long, according to a health system analysis.
A different study found that patients who get housing through the program saw a reduction in emergency department visits and in the amount of time they were hospitalized within the first year of housing.