On the streets of Scranton, healthcare can often fall through the cracks. But now, it is rolling right to those who need it.<\/p>\n
“So, the idea came about because when I came to do my residency in Scranton, I saw that there was no program which was directed towards taking care of homeless people,” said Dr. Tejas Nikumbh, Internal Medicine at the Wright Center.<\/p>\n
The Wright Center is starting a new program, turning a van into a full exam room on wheels. It’s known as street medicine to meet patients where they are, helping anyone in need or those experiencing homelessness.<\/p>\n
“A lot of our clients face barriers just getting to medical appointments, transportation, lack of insurance, fear of the unknown. The Wright Center alleviates all that,” said Michelle Matyjevich, CIC Deputy Director.<\/p>\n
Inside, blood pressure checks, physicals, and prescriptions. Outside, something just as important, trust.<\/p>\n
“It means a lot because they’re here to help, they actually come to you instead of you going to them. They’re very nice. They ask you plenty of questions,” said one person.<\/p>\n
“They’re more willing to go to meet people when it’s on their grounds, when it’s their territory, they’re familiar, they’re already comfortable being here,” said Matyjevich.<\/p>\n
It’s estimated there are about 216 people living on the streets in Scranton.<\/p>\n
With the help of this van, doctors have been able to care for more than a third of them.<\/p>\n
The van has been coming twice a month since January and for many, it’s the first consistent care they’ve had in years.<\/p>\n
“The biggest problem is like chronic diseases like hypertension, almost more than 50 percent of people will have hypertension, and more than two co-morbidities and a lot of mental health diseases, as well,” said Dr. Nikumbh.<\/p>\n
They also help uncover major issues like cancer.<\/p>\n
“We’ve been able to reconnect them with getting the imaging tests and the specialists that they need to get the diagnosis and start treatments,” said Dr. Doug Klamp, the Wright Center.<\/p>\n
And sometimes their biggest recoveries are not fixed by band-aids or medication, it’s something a little harder to prescribe.<\/p>\n
“Our biggest successes are the individuals who are not here with us today because they have been able to find jobs, they have been able to find an apartment for them because we were able to help them with that,” said Dr. Nikumbh.<\/p>\n
“Just having someone in their corner for someone who has not had many people in their corner has had a pretty big psychological impact on many of them,” said Klamp.<\/p>\n
Here, the first step in healing is just stopping and showing up.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"On the streets of Scranton, healthcare can often fall through the cracks. But now, it is rolling right…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":193788,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[15],"tags":[86283,178,180,179,86282,86284],"class_list":["post-193787","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-scranton","tag-consistent-care","tag-scranton","tag-scranton-headlines","tag-scranton-news","tag-tejas-nikumbh","tag-the-wright-center"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/193787","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=193787"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/193787\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/193788"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=193787"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=193787"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=193787"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}