Local shelter partners with WellSpan to help homeless with medical needs

The Fresh Start program, a resource center and emergency shelter for homeless families operated by Lebanon County Christian Ministries, will become a partner with WellSpan Health's Arches to Wellness program, a recuperative care medical respite program, providing those facing health challenges and lack of housing with a place to stay while they receive medical support.

While the program has partnerships with shelters in Franklin, Adams and York counties, the two beds at the Fresh Start shelter will be Lebanon County's first.

Patients can be recommended for the program by WellSpan caregivers or by those at partnered shelters.

Bryan Smith, executive director of LCCM, said that early on in the conversation, when Fresh Start shelter was identified as the kind of program that Arches to Wellness was looking to partner with, it made sense to have a program in the community that serves homeless people with medical needs, rather than having them travel outside the county.

"For us as an organization, this brings a level of case management and resources to the table that may have been concern for acceptance because of medical conditions," he said. "My staff are shelter staff, they're loving people who care for folks, but they're not nurses and caregivers from a medical perspective. This helps to bridge that gap."

Smith said both the Arches to Wellness beds and the new location for the Fresh Start shelter at 611 Chestnut St., housed under the Chestnut Street Community Center, will go live at the same time, which is currently planned for next week.

Jenn Weitkamp, manager of business operations for special programs at WellSpan, gave a hypothetical example of how the program works: a patient who keeps showing up in the emergency room is identified by staff that while they do have medical issues, the larger underlying issue is that they're suffering from homelessness.

The Arches to Wellness team is then notified and looks through the patient's chart to get a better understanding of the situation. They then have a conversation with the patient about whether they would like to come into the program. Once approved, they're given their own space, three meals a day, snacks if needed, laundry, shower facilities and a warm bed.

"The other thing, a lot of people don't think about this, but many of our shelter systems during the day, the folks that are staying there have to leave during the day," Weitkamp said. "For people that are recovering or are sick or whatever, that becomes a really difficult thing because you might be sitting outside in the cold for six hours before you can go back in."

"When they come into our program, they don't have to do that, they can stay indoors all the time so they can get the care that they need."

With the addition of the two beds in Lebanon, WellSpan has 20 Arches to Wellness beds in shelters across Central Pennsylvania. Weitkamp said that recuperative care medical respites aren't very common.

According to data from the National Institute for Medical Respite Care, which Arches to Wellness is a a part of, there are 145 medical respite programs in the country and three in Pennsylvania, including the WellSpan program.

Weitkamp said the space used at local shelters for the Arches to Wellness program are leased from them whether the beds are filled or not.

Smith said that those funds allow them to offset expenses and continue to offer resources to the community through the Fresh Start Shelter in the long-term.

"The thing that has been very obvious to myself and my team is that we are getting more referrals than we can possibly fill beds. One of the things that we really try to do in our department is when we have people that are in different counties, like maybe we have openings in our York location but we're getting a referral from Good Sam in Lebanon, we don't love to move people around."

"We really want to keep them in their county or area where they're already connected."

She said that WellSpan has been seeing an increase in referrals from Lebanon County who meet the needs for recuperative care.

The program allows its patients to recover from whatever health issue they are facing, and get better. She explained that the patients can be suffering from anything from wounds on their feet to a cancer patient being treated with chemotherapy. While the level of treatment depends on a patient's circumstances, nurses cane be brought in to see the patients and transportation is arranged for their appointments.

Part of the benifit, Weitkamp said, is that it allows for beds in the hospitals to open, as patients facing similar circumstances before Arches to Wellness would often end up staying in the hospital for longer periods of time.

"It's really not ideal for somebody to stay in the hospital bed when maybe what they really need is something that can be given at the outpatient level, like maybe they need some nursing education around diabetes or maybe they need physical therapy but they're not at a point where they're debilitated and can't function."

Generally, she said, who become part of the Arches to Wellness program are usually there for 30-45 days. While they're there, they're connected social workers who help them plan their next steps, and connect them with the resources they might need.

In terms of outcomes, Weitkamp said that the Arches to Wellness was able to connect 88% of its patients with permanent or temporary housing, taking into account that generally it's the connection made with the shelter system, 100% to a primary care physician, 63% to an ID, 81% to a birth certificate and 95% to insurance. While not a requirement, 100% of patients currently in the program were considered homeless before being recommended into the program.

Daniel Larlham Jr. is a reporter for the Lebanon Daily News. Reach him at DLarlham@LDNews.com or on X @djlarlham.

This article originally appeared on Lebanon Daily News: Arches to Wellness beds find space at Fresh Start shelter