This is the third in a series of columns written by staff from The Lighthouse to help the community better understand people experiencing homelessness and those who support them. This column will appear every other Monday. (Click here to read the first column. Click here to read the second column).
Chris came to The Lighthouse in poor physical condition. He had been having multiple complications. He was able to receive care at the on-site medical clinic. Chris said “without the clinic, I wouldn’t have anywhere else to go and would pretty much be in a wheelchair.”
When a person has nowhere to live in our city, The Lighthouse’s main goal is to help them move from homelessness to being housed. This sounds simple, but each person’s situation is unique and there is no one-size-fits-all approach.
However, a challenge that many of our participants (people who access services at The Lighthouse) face is a lack of access to medical care.
Living outside and experiencing the stress caused by homelessness results in a variety of physical health challenges. People experiencing homelessness don’t necessarily get the proper medication or the treatment they need; sometimes because they don’t have access to a phone, a computer, or a health card.
Without stable housing, many participants don’t have a family doctor, further impacting their ability to sustain meaningful employment and provide for themselves. While the healthcare system has its strengths, it’s not perfect. People without the resources that we may take for granted often slip through the cracks, and it poses significant barriers to a person’s well-being.
In the 2022 Homelessness Enumeration, people experiencing homelessness in Orillia showed that 34 per cent had illness or medical condition, and 37 per cent had physical disability.
At The Lighthouse, we know that for someone to maintain housing, they need to be well. Our primary goal is to help participants set and reach their housing goals. To do so, we must support the whole person, and our medical clinic is built to address these issues.
The Lighthouse has the only on-site medical clinic at any shelter north of Toronto. We meet participants where they are, and we don’t do this alone. The clinic is led by retired Registered Nurse, Nancy Sutherland and Dr. Anna Naylor, supported by a team of volunteers who are knowledgeable and passionate about seeing people healthy.
We partner with the Couchiching Family Health Team, the Couchiching Ontario Health Team, the County of Simcoe’s Community Paramedicine Program, Home and Community Care, as well as other community partnerships.
Doctors, nurse practitioners, a foot-care specialist and paramedics make regular visits to our on-site clinic and provide medical services for participants accessing The Lighthouse’s programs such as emergency shelter, supportive housing, warming centre or community bagged lunch program.
These medical professionals provide consultation, make referrals, and help with the appropriate medication. If participants are already connected to a health-care provider outside of our clinic, they are encouraged to make an appointment with their regular health-care provider, ensuring that clinic appointments can be used by people without other options.
Partnerships are critical in addressing this need, and The Lighthouse is honoured to be an anchor partner on the Couchiching Ontario Health Team — Joint Executive Team. Through the COHT, partners work together to design and deliver a local, integrated care delivery system for the whole community.
On-site medical care is available for participants most days of the week, in addition to the time volunteers spend providing administrative support for the clinic. In 2022, The Lighthouse’s medical clinic had 998 appointments.
The top three reasons for seeking care were acute care, medications and chronic ailments. From data collected from 319 visits last year, 183 indicated that without the clinic, they would have received no care and 110 would have gone to the emergency room.
By providing timely access to medical services on-site, our clinic is able to divert people from the emergency department when other care is more appropriate. The clinic is a key preventive measure in addressing medical issues before they become an emergency, so that people in the early stages of a disease or who are living with a chronic ailment that needs to be treated can see a doctor before things get to the point that they become urgent and they end up using the emergency room.
The impact of diverting participants from the emergency department is multifaceted. By providing care outside of the emergency room, the clinic ensures that wait times in the emergency room are not exacerbated. It also ensures that chronic illnesses are treated so that they do not require hospital admission or a long-term hospital stay, in addition to using the emergency room.
In this way, the medical clinic provides a significant economic benefit in our community. According to the Gattuso Institute for Social Medicine, a person’s stay costs $30,200/month in a hospital ward, $6,667/month in shelter and $2,800/month in supportive housing.
For example, if 100 chronically ill participants needed to go to the hospital, it would cost $3,020,00 for them to spend one month in hospital. However, if they were diverted from overnight hospital stays due to the Medical Clinic and could stay in shelter, it would cost $666,700 for those same 100 individuals to stay one month in shelter. That is a huge difference in economic cost to our community.
In addition to helping our local medical system and services with their case-loads, early attention and diagnosis play a critical role in helping our participants get well, which in turn enables them to pursue their housing and goals in the community.
A person who can manage their physical health can focus on their future. Services provided at The Lighthouse Medical Clinic allow people to move forward with their goals. We know that hope changes lives, and the clinic is an integral part of providing hope. Thank you to everyone who has and who continues to support this vital service.
Linda Goodall is the executive director at The Lighthouse and can be reached, via email, at [email protected]
