Better Health Through Housing is a supportive housing program designed to reduce healthcare costs by moving homeless people from emergency rooms into stable housing.
The University of Illinois Hospital decided to participate in this program as part of its health equity mission. Its staff later discovered that besides providing housing, the program improved health and reduced the frequency of expensive emergency room visits.
Video Spotlight: Ted Talk: Housing Is Health
This post is based on a 90.9 WBUR report, To Reduce Chronic Homelessness, a Chicago Hospital Is Treating It as A Medical Condition, by J. Hobson, February 21, 2019; and the YouTube video, Health Equity: Housing is Health | Steve Brown | TEDxRushU, by Tedx, January 16, 2019. Image source: Ingram Publishing
Discussion Questions:
1. Is homelessness an operations issue?
Guidance: The homeless are “customers” of multiple processes performed by many organizations: hospitals, prisons, soup kitchens, homeless shelters, police departments, Medicaid, etc. As a result, they directly influence the operations of these organizations. Very interestingly, the article mentions that to achieve better solutions to the problems experienced or caused by the homeless, it’s better to coordinate processes and resources than to work in silos.
2. How Continue reading →
