Health Connect

Improving the health of homeless individuals

For those without a job or healthcare coverage, one health emergency can trigger homelessness. In addition, many people who are homeless struggle with health problems that require long-term, consistent care. Health Connect was a national demonstration project aimed at improving the health of 600 people with chronic health conditions who are homeless.

Via a partnership with the National Health Care for the Homeless Council www.nhchc.org, in 2012 Health Connect brought Springwire’s Community Voice Mail and Resource Broadcasting programs to Health Care for the Homeless clinics in six U.S. cities including Jacksonville, Miami, Cincinnati, St. Louis, Milwaukee and San Diego.  With Health Connect, chronically ill homeless patients had a way to be contacted regarding individualized care and treatment regimens, and receive well-designed, serialized public health and social service information via email and voice mail broadcasts.

“Community Voice Mail is a simple solution to a weighty problem faced by Health Care for the Homeless Clinics around the country – having a reliable way to reach their patients. Beyond serving their homeless patients more effectively, by utilizing the Community Voice Mail and Resource Broadcasting programs our HCH clinics have the potential to increase their capacity to meet increasing standards for federal funding, including creating a Patient Centered Medical Home and showing Meaningful Use of Electronic Health Records. If doctors can’t reach their patients for follow up care, referrals or medication management, how can they effectively treat them? 

Findings from the 2012 Demonstration Project:

Participating Clinics reported

• Reduced number of consumers with no reliable way to be reached
• Improved clinic ability to
  • Plan and manage care
  • Provide self-care support and community resources
  • Improved clinic ability to manage medications
  • Improved clinic ability to complete medical records

Participating Consumers reported

• Community Voice Mail helped them stay in touch with medical providers
• Resource broadcast messages were helpful

“Having the access to Community Voice Mail has saved my life… it helps me get my psychiatric high blood pressure medications.  It’s a wonderful resource”. – San Diego patient

“Clinics can take satisfaction in knowing that by signing up their patients for Community Voice Mail, they are giving them a private and confidential way to be reached by the clinic as well as by the other important people in their lives.” – John Lozier, Executive Director, National Health Care for the Homeless Council