Glenwood Springs, Colo., is a community of nearly 10,000 people that sits roughly 40 miles northwest of Aspen, Colo. It is also home to a growing and increasingly visible homeless population, which has not gone unnoticed by the town residents or the local hospital, according to a recent report from The Daily Sentinel.
Alan Saliman, MD, CMO at Valley View Hospital in Glenwood Springs, told the local newspaper that admissions of homeless people have risen from an average of nine a month in 2013 to roughly 15 per month this year.
"It is heartbreaking to take care of somebody who has an acute illness or neglected health issue and to discharge them to their tent," Dr. Saliman told The Daily Sentinel.
According to Dr. Saliman, many of the homeless individuals the hospital treats have psychiatric, alcohol or substance abuse problems, yet no detox program has existed in the county for a number of years, leaving a void in the community to appropriately treat the individuals.
In response to the growing problem, Dr. Saliman tells Becker's Hospital Review that he and Valley View CNO Sandra Hurley, RN, reinvigorated a conversation with the community to determine how best to support these individuals roughly 18 months ago. The hospital reached out to law enforcement, local municipalities, the county government and other healthcare organizations to tackle the problem.
"Our vision was to bring the group together to embrace these issues as community-wide issues, rather than an issue limited to the hospital or to law enforcement," says Dr. Saliman. "Plans are coming together to once again have a detox center in our county. I would not say that our hospital is trying to open this center but truly our community is trying to open the center."
Dr. Saliman goes on to say that, as a nonprofit healthcare organization, it is entirely appropriate to be involved in the effort to open a local detox center.
"A detox center will hopefully not only help our patients benefit from appropriate treatment for substance, alcohol and psychiatric issues but also help our community overall," he says.
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