![]() ![]() These teams deliver health care to people experiencing homelessness on the streets, in the riverbeds, under bridges, or wherever terrains they reside in the vast Los Angeles County. ![]() In the nation’s second-most populous city, the street medicine program at the University of Southern California’s Keck School of Medicine combs the neighborhoods. Photo by Larry Valenzuela for CalMatters/CatchLight Local LA Street Team Physician assistant Brett Feldman’s street medicine team drive into downtown Los Angeles to look for patients on Feb. This project, a collaboration between CalMatters and CatchLight, attempts to capture what street medics are doing in Los Angeles, Bakersfield, and Redding. They also include community health workers, who hand out food and hygiene supplies and help people overcome hurdles to obtaining aid and housing. Most teams stress continuity - visiting the same patients in the same places, at regular intervals. It’s encouraging insurers to fund and partner with organizations that bring medical care straight into encampments, and as of November, allowing those teams to get reimbursed by tapping into and managing homeless patients’ Medi-Cal benefits.Īt least 25 teams now operate throughout California, strapping on backpacks filled with medical supplies and meeting homeless people where they are. Trying to change things, the state’s Health Care Services Department is throwing its support behind street medicine teams. That’s inhumane and inefficient: More than half of the state’s $133 billion Medi-Cal budget is spent on the top 5% of high-needs users. ![]() California’s more than 170,000 unhoused people often lack the means and mobility to locate and visit a doctor who will accept them - so conditions fester until they need emergency treatment. ![]()
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