Paul Vermette, our Director of Strategic Initiatives, recently attended the Putting Care at the Centre Conference in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. He, as well as leaders from Sara Riel and Youville Community Health, were in attendance to hear about ways that other health care providers in North America are caring for the whole person. He sat down to talk about his experience.
Why was it important for Réseau Compassion Network and its members to be at this conference?
Paul Vermette (PV): The conference was focused on the idea that many causes of poor health are best addressed through non-medical interventions, sometimes as simple as nutritious food. It was hosted by the Camden Coalition, a non-profit organisation based in New Jersey which demonstrates how social services and medical services can come together to support whole persons and achieve better health outcomes for everyone; incidentally for less money, too. The members of our Network working group have been discussing how we can do a better job of caring for and supporting folks who deal with complex social drivers of health, and we went to the conference to learn and be inspired.
What would it look like to use social interventions instead of medical interventions?
PV: There was a very impactful story from Boston Medical Centre. They’re an accountable care organisation, which means that they must care for their whole community regardless of each person’s ability to pay.
They’re located near several large encampments, where folks are living somewhat unsheltered and facing many challenges. Their Emergency Department (ED) physicians noticed that they were seeing many of the same people in crisis over and over again; sometimes more than15 times per month and many times leaving the ED without being seen. They wondered if there was a better way to support these folks, so that they wouldn’t ever reach the crises requiring emergency care.
Like Réseau Compassion Network, Boston Medical Centre is part of a network of health and social services organizations, so they could draw on a diverse community of supports around them.
After taking time to speak with and understand the needs of the people they were supporting, the decision was made launch a new program with a set of services ready to offer from existing teams and most importantly – Emergency Department peer support workers, with lived experience. These staff had literally been living in the encampments up until recently. These workers were the most important people in this new program. Because of their lived experience, they were much more able to build relationships and trust with the patients. Sometimes it took many visits, but patients felt that that person was “one of them” and they were more open to receiving supports, such as housing, addictions support, and other therapeutic programming.
The result was that emergency department visits dropped by over 20% and people leaving the ED without being seen was cut almost in half. That data is impressive, if not shocking, but what that data represents is also interesting.
What does the data tell you, Paul?
PV: It highlights what many of our front-line providers have always known: when we listen to the voices and the experiences of those who have been through a particular situation, like being unhoused, the outcomes for those people improve. These folks are having what most of us would consider the most difficult days of our lives, day after day. It’s about us adapting our care and systems to them, not asking them to adapt to us.
We know our health and social services systems are siloed; we know there are people falling through the cracks. This conference helped us to be inspired. It also helped understand the wealth of other people’s experiences and models supporting people in new and better ways. Our network agencies want to create better outcomes for folks, and we’ve got some interesting new ideas to help make that happen.