This vending machine at East 48th Avenue doesn’t dispense chips and soda, but life-saving prescription drugs for the homeless.
The Colorado Coalition for the Homeless has expanded its pharmacy capabilities by offering medications such as inhalers, Narcan nasal spray for opioid overdoses and antihistamines for allergies through a vending machine located at the 48th Avenue Health Center, located next to two of Denver’s largest congregate shelters.
Made by the California pharmaceutical company PickPoint, the vending machine is technically a “remote dispensing machine,” says Joanna Leonard, the CCH chief clinical officer. CCH installed it at the clinic, located at 4600 East 48th Avenue, about six months ago. In addition to life-saving medication, the vending machine also dispenses lidocaine pain ointments, laxatives and nicotine patches.
“It just looks like a vending machine,” Leonard says. “It costs a lot to staff pharmacies. We would love, if money is no object, to have a functioning pharmacy in every location, but we can’t. So that’s why we have these machines, to help people get access to medications.”
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The 48th Avenue Health Center has medical providers on site, but Leonard says CCH can only afford to staff pharmacists at its main clinic, the Stout Street Health Center at 2130 Stout Street.
With the vending machine, a CCH pharmacist at the Stout Street Health Center can dispense a prescription remotely. A medical assistant at the 48th Avenue Health Center just needs to print a label and scan it at the machine. After a Stout Street pharmacist verifies the label, the drug falls into a bin at the bottom of the machine, where the medical assistant retrieves it and hands it off to the patient.
The coalition has another dispensing machine next door to the Stout Street Health Center inside of a recuperative care facility, allowing pharmacists to dispense prescriptions to patients before they’re discharged.
The 48th Avenue Health Center shares a building with the Denver Rescue Mission 48th Avenue Center, a 24/7 shelter that offers three free meals a day as well as showers and 200 beds that are quickly snapped up. The offerings attract hundreds of people inside at a time, with dozens of homeless residents hanging around outside throughout the day. The shelter is located in Park Hill, in an industrial patch of north Denver surrounded by tracks, warehouses and Interstate 70. The dispensing machine allows CCH to keep a tiny pharmacy next door.
“It’s great that we have a health center right here right next to the shelter. Our patients can get access to medical care right away,” Leonard says. “Because we don’t have an on-sight pharmacy, patients don’t get their medication the same day. They often have to wait until the next day to get the medication.”
The “remote dispensing machine” allows CCH pharmacists to deliver inhalers, narcan, lidocaine, laxatives and nicotine patches from three miles away.
The Samaritan House, a 270-bed women’s shelter at 2301 Lawrence Street, is a few steps from the Denver Rescue Mission shelter and 48th Avenue Health Center, too. During cold weather, the City of Denver relies on the Samaritan House as an emergency shelter for individual women.
Mike Masse, a medical assistant supervisor at the 48th Avenue Health Center, says homeless residents in the area would rather stay near the Samaritan House and Denver Rescue Mission shelter then go three miles downtown to the Stout Street Health Center for their prescriptions, even if they’re offered a free ride.
“As much as we would like to think it would be easy to send someone from here to Stout, about three miles away, I personally was surprised to see that itself is a roadblock for patients,” he says. “They just don’t want to go downtown. By being here at the shelter, they’re able to access their prescriptions. Even if we offer them a Lyft or a transfer to get down there, they prefer to stay in this area and go without.”
“Their belongings are here, they have their case management services right here” at the Denver Rescue Mission shelter, Leonard says.
Some patients come into the clinic with emergencies like asthma or allergy attacks, and without the right medication on hand, medical providers have to send them to the emergency room, she explains. Weekends can be even trickier, because if a patient gets a prescription on Friday, a pharmacist won’t be able to fulfill it until Monday.
“Providers will be more comfortable knowing the patient can have medication for high blood pressure or give them inhalers for an asthma treatment,” Leonard says. “We see there’s a need for patients to get their medication right away. That’s basically the thinking behind it.”
Masse says that before the machine, he had to order prescriptions from the Stout Street Health Center, but patients wouldn’t regularly return to pick up their medications. Now, medical providers are able to write a prescription during a visit with a patient, and Masse can bring it to them before they leave, he says.
Although CCH is known for running affordable housing complexes, the coalition started out in 1984 as a health-care provider. The 48th Avenue Health Center was founded by CCH with one medical provider, one nurse and one medical assistant, and has since grown to offer psychiatric and behavioral health services once a week and dental services twice weekly, Masse says.
The dispensing machine is the latest effort by CCH to expand pharmaceutical services to East 48th Avenue, but it’s still a mostly empty machine. Masse says CCH hopes to see more medication for diabetes, high blood pressure and other ailments stocked, but the dispensing machine only keeps a couple of handfuls of the most common prescription drugs at time right now.
“It’s become so beneficial for us to have this,” Masse says. “I think there’s a lot more that we can do with it. We want more of it now. I wish I had a room full of these things where all kinds of medications could be dispensed.”