Following the success its leaders have seen with the organization’s street medicine effort in Garden Grove, CalOptima Health is taking its “doctor’s office on wheels” program next to visit homeless communities in Anaheim and Costa Mesa.
The street medicine program delivers primary health care, as well as behavioral health services and case management help, to unhoused individuals living in parks, under freeways and elsewhere on the streets.
When the program launched in Garden Grove in April, CalOptima gave Healthcare in Action – an organization that’s part of the SCAN Group and provides health care and other services to homeless individuals – the goal of signing up 200 patients in 18 months. Ten months later, the team has already reached 138 members receiving services.
The medical team – consisting of a physician assistant, registered nurse, a mental health specialist and peer navigators who have experience with homelessness themselves – travels the community in a van equipped with most things a traditional medical office would have and visits people who are homeless where they are at.
CalOptima is investing $5 million for a two-year expansion of the program into Anaheim and Costa Mesa. Visits there are expected to launch in August.
CalOptima is the provider of publicly funded health coverage in Orange County and, with support from the state, is investing more into addressing housing and homeless needs with its healthcare support services.
Kelly Bruno-Nelson, executive director of Medi-Cal/CalAIM at CalOptima, said piloting the program in one city was essential to making sure it was designed correctly.
“It’s a new model and it’s a new way of providing street medicine. We wanted to make sure it works,” Bruno-Nelson said. “We had some concepts and some ideas. We had some evidence-based practices at the foundation, harm reduction and trauma-informed care, all those things. But we wanted the time to design it, make sure it works…
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