Transient hospital patients in San Diego are sometimes discharged and put back on the streets after receiving treatment, even after the passing of SB-1152, which requires hospitals to have a homeless discharge policy in place.
All of us at Scripps Health share the community’s concern and compassion for the unsheltered individuals and families in San Diego. Scripps complies with all provisions of SB-1152. Last year, at Scripps Mercy Hospital San Diego alone, we had more than 10,500 homeless patient visits.
If we complete a patient’s treatment late at night and determine they have nowhere to go at that time, we wait to discharge them until morning if they are willing to stay. While unsheltered patients are with us, we give them a meal, any weather-appropriate clothing needed, as well as necessary medications and immunizations.
“Too often, people are found in the streets in medical crisis or, sadly, dead, as was the case last year for 572 San Diegans,” Chechel said, “This is not only a crisis of public health, it’s a crisis of humanity. The solution to this crisis does not reside in one organization or one hospital but instead requires that we as a community stand up and say this is unacceptable, to have people left alone and to suffer and die on the curb.
Another big issue? There are no homeless shelters that will accept people in the middle of the night if they’ve been discharged from a hospital.
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