Program shows promise cutting health care costs for chronically homeless
EUGENE, Ore. - Life was great for Rick Downing - until one day, he woke up very ill.
"Six years ago, I just woke up one day and I was sick," he said. "They're calling it fibromyalgia."
Downing has a flu-like feeling - that never went away.
And that was just the beginning.
"Then I got hit by a car," he said, "and I've never really been the same since then, 3 years ago."
Downing lost his job as a mover in Florence and wound up on the street.
He became part of the chronically homeless who wind up much too often in hospital emergency rooms, in jails, and in the courts.
Downing found his lifeline in the pilot program called FUSE, for "frequent user, system engagement".
The idea is to break the homeless cycle with housing and support services.
FUSE "saves both the health plan money, the community money and most importantly we can focus the resources where they belong," said Dr. Tom Wuest, chief medical officer for Trillium.
The pilot program has helped 26 people; 16 still on the streets but getting outreach services, and 10 others, like Downing, are in basic apartments.
"They really can focus on their health," said Danielle Bautista with Lane County Public Health. "They can get to their doctors appointments, and they can focus on other areas of their life as well."
Managers say the results have been startling: health care costs for FUSE clients have dropped 53 percent.
Arrest rates with local police have dropped 82 percent.
"I anticipate that Rick is going to start getting healthier at this point," said Melissa McCloskey, a FUSE case manager, "and he's going to be able to create a life for himself that's stable."
The results are so promising that Trillium health plan is investing $200,000 this year to expand FUSE.
Which is good news for people like Downing.
"I was on the street before I got here," he said. "I don't even know what would have been happening to me. It was rough.'
