The typical scenario goes something like this: After a procedure in an Albuquerque hospital, a family member or friend picks you up for a ride home to begin your recovery. While you were gone, your pets were cared for and someone made you a pot of soup that’s ready to be heated up. Life starts to return to normal. But the scenario is a foreign one to those living on the streets.
Their most common experience is this: A medical need means going to an emergency room — often at University of New Mexico Hospital (UNMH) — to receive care and then exit back to the street. It’s a costly situation that very often results in return visits, because trying to heal when you’re homeless and in unsafe environments rarely works.
“Too often those patients return to us after we discharge them, for preventable reasons,” Kate Becker, CEO of UNMH, said. “Maybe a suture became infected while they were on the streets; they became sick again because they didn’t have a safe place to continue to recover after a procedure or surgery. Hospitals are not set up to be respite centers.”
Becker and others joined city officials Tuesday to unveil a 22,500-square-foot medical respite unit at the Gateway Center on Gibson Boulevard to help fill the gap in care for those experiencing homelessness. To mark the occasion, officials gave tours of the $16 million project (funded through American Rescue Plan Act of 2021 and capital outlay monies) and reflected on the eight years it took to see it through. Annual operating costs are expected to be about $1.5 million.
The project is important for a patients’ dignity, they said, and also because readmissions to the hospital are two times higher for those who are homeless, according to an Albuquerque Health Care for the Homeless (AHCH) analysis. Further, those patients stay about four days longer on average.
“Collaboration is where we identify the issue; in this case it was identified years ago by our hospital partners, our service providers, by people experiencing homelessness and did not have a place to go” Jennifer Metzler, CEO of AHCH, said.
AHCH was a lead on the project and is a key provider at the center, tasked to make sure patients are enrolled in public benefits and have access to specialty care. Their team will also try to place patients who discharge into housing. The city has allocated $900,000 in housing vouchers to help.
AHCH, UNMH and First Nations Community HealthSource will refer patients to the 50-bed center. First Nations will provide medical care. The beds are available for up to 60 days, and officials estimate about 400 patients could be served each year.
“We know that that’s not enough. We could fill many times over that number of beds,” Kate Morton, AHCH chief clinical officer, said.
“We know the need is much, much greater — but now we’re able to demonstrate [that] we’re making the investment, we’re closing those gaps,” Mayor Tim Keller said. “We just have to keep doing more of it and scale this up even further.”
The director of the city’s Health, Housing & Homelessness Department (HHH), Gilbert Ramírez, said the 50-bed start is a critical one.
“We’re going to meet a gap that’s so important,” he said. “We’ll show the offset of individuals who have a safe place to go and heal and not have to return to a costly cycle and enter back into the system.”
HHH is the city department in charge of the Gateway Center, which currently operates a 50-bed shelter for women, as well as a first responder receiving area (with private assessment rooms for those who don’t need medical attention) and a medical sobering unit (for those who need medically-supervised treatment for alcohol and substance use disorders).
Albuquerque Heading Home was awarded a city contract to oversee the medical respite center’s overall operations.
“I think we now have over a dozen partners [operating] at the Gateway,” Keller said. “I want folks to know that roughly 500 people are getting help here everyday — and of course we want to continue to expand that more.”
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