Dive Brief:
-
Oregon health plans are looking at housing as the newest frontier in helping patients achieve better health and well-being, KTVZ.com reported.
- The move comes thanks to grants from the nonprofit organization CareOregon, which provides health plan services to coordinated care organizations around the state.
-
The grants will support organizations that provide affordable, stable housing, and aim to chip away at the state's homeless rate, which ranks in the top five.
Dive Insight:
The projects are based on the premise that housing needs to come first in order for patients to effectively manage their health related needs and responsibilities, rather than the other way around--a view supported by research on Portland's homeless population by the Center for Outcomes Research and Education, which concluded that access to stable housing coincided with reductions in Medicaid expenses of 12% and reductions in emergency care expenses of 18%.
One of the grants will go to Rogue Retreat, which partners with coordinated-care provider Jackson Care Connect, KTVZ reported. Those organizations are working together to build a tiny house community dubbed Hope Village.
"Housing is the very platform and the foundation for all health outcomes," Heidi Hill of Jackson Care Connect told KTVZ. "They're much more likely to gain and maintain sobriety. They're much more likely to be able to manage their healthcare needs." Hill suggested that although housing is a new to healthcare, it has been a long time coming.
A recent study done in San Francisco found housing the homeless can actually help reduce the costs the city spends on them in emergency care, behavioral health services, welfare, and food stamps.