Emergency departments are already packed with patients in a season of spiking respiratory viruses, but they are also seeing record numbers of another kind of patient: families experiencing homelessness:
Emergency Physician Amanda Stewart talks with a colleague outside the emergency entrance to Boston Children's Hospital.
At the bus terminal, she asked a taxi driver to take them to the emergency room. WBUR is using her middle name because her family was a target of violence in Haiti.The next morning, hospital staff sent them to a field office for the Department of Housing and Community Development, the state agency that runs the family shelter system. But by the end of the day, their application was still underway and they had nowhere to go.
, but they are also seeing record numbers of another kind of patient. One that doesn’t need emergency medical care. Families experiencing homelessness are turning to Massachusetts emergency departments at historic rates.Often these families have nowhere else to go during their critical first few days of homelessness.
“We're really trying to avoid this becoming our new normal,” said Megan Sandel, a physician at Boston Medical Center, who has been working on housing and homelessness for 20 years.About a decade ago, families experiencing homelessness started showing up in the state’s emergency departments in significant numbers. But recently, the numbers have ballooned as an affordable housing crisis collides with a spike in new migrants arriving in the state.
The legislature changed this policy in 2019, but hospitals say families continued to arrive. And emergency department social workers continued to help them apply for shelter — in addition to serving all of the other families facing traumas, like car accidents, deaths or domestic violence. “It's very intensive case management that we're doing,” she said. “And just constant communication back and forth with [state workers] to make certain that the documents that we're sending are being received and are being interpreted the way that we're understanding [them].”When a family in need of shelter comes to the emergency department at Boston Children’s, staff try to find a better alternative.
In addition, families in the emergency department at Boston Children’s enter a complex, daily cycle of being admitted to the ER, discharged and then readmitted the next night. Recently, she said, families remain in the emergency department waiting room all night, sleeping on cushioned benches. The state is also taking steps to increase the number of family shelter beds. In a letter to the legislature last month requesting additional funds, Gov. Charlie Bakerin Devens. However, advocates say the facility is being used for families that have already entered the shelter system, not those still completing the application process.When Oscar and her 8-year-old returned to Boston Medical Center for a second night, it was not surprising for hospital staff.
FamilyAid social workers take families from BMC to one of the apartments or a hotel room. From there, they can gather documents and help the family apply for the state’s shelter system.
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