In the first year of the pandemic, San Francisco and other communities in California offered private hotel rooms, three meals a day and on-site medical services to homeless people who were at risk of getting severe COVID-19.
The aim was to stop the spread of the virus among a highly vulnerable group, but the policy had another important effect, according to new research by UC San Francisco, UC Berkeley and the San Francisco Department of Public Health. It dramatically lowered the use of acute medical care by the hotel occupants who had used this type of care the most in the past.
The hotels provided different levels of medical care, anywhere from half a day of on-site nursing to full-time medical staff who went on daily rounds. Researchers said this solved two of the problems that unsheltered people often face when they are seriously ill: trouble accessing regular medical care and not having a place to go once they are ready to leave the hospital.
“Our research highlights how a program for people experiencing homelessness, which was implemented quickly and out of necessity, had an impact beyond its primary goal of COVID mitigation,” said Maria Raven, MD, MPH, UCSF Chief of Emergency Medicine, Vice Chair in the UCSF Department of Emergency Medicine, and co-lead of the Benioff Homelessness and Housing Initiative program on adults with complex needs. “It’s important to study interventions like this that were put in place during a public health emergency, so in a future crisis we can implement programs that are evidenced-based.”
The study published Wednesday, July 27, 2022, in JAMA Network Open.