07.15.20 COVID-19 Briefing Live Stream Transcript

The County of Santa Clara
July 15, 2020
Live Stream - Briefing Live stream
10:00am PT

Selene Ho: Hi everyone my name is Selene Ho I'm the director for the valley homeless health care program. We are going to take our mask off now to allow the ASL interpreter to better understand and follow our conversation. Before we before we begin I wanted to let everybody know of the current COVID cases that we have as of July 14, 2020 yesterday. we have six thousand seven hundred and twenty-five cumulative cases a hundred and seventy cumulative deaths and of those we had three new deaths. Our condolences go out to the families that are affected by this pandemic. The COVID-19 pandemic has affected everyone in the county and even in the and around the world. During this time one group that were especially concerned about are people experiencing homelessness. Santa Clara Valley Medical Center's Valley Homeless Health Care program has been bringing medical care behavioral health services and support services to homeless individuals where they are. The VHHP also as it's also known has been really at the critical has been playing a critical role in ensuring that our folks are safe and healthy during this pandemic. Joining me to talk more about the valley homeless healthcare program and to give us an overview is Dr. Gilotra our medical director for the valley homeless healthcare program and Derik Everett our community outreach specialist welcome to you both and thank you for taking the time to be here with us today.

Derik Everett: Thank you.

SH: First off, I'm going to start with Dr. Gilotra can you tell us a little bit more about the valley homeless healthcare program and other services?

Dr. Mudit Gilotra: Absolutely, thank you.  So, the valley homeless healthcare program is a federally qualified health center that's part of Santa Clara County Health and Hospital system. The homeless program has the core belief that every person deserves dignity and the highest level of healthcare possible. We believe that that every person should have the highest standard of healthcare the same standard that you or I or all of us would receive at an academic center or a private institution. Further, we believe that health care is a human right and that homelessness is a problem that we can solve and we are working to solve it every single day on the individual level and on the community level. On the ground the valley homeless health care program is a collection of 15 access points we have our standard brick-and-mortar sites which are just similar to the doctors’ offices that you and I would go to. We have three mobile units which are large RVs with exam rooms pretty much like a doctor’s office equipped like a doctor's office that go to different places around the county where homeless people congregate. So, these are shelters or general assistance office or the reentry Center where we know a lot of people coming out of jail or prison end up homeless. Different high schools around the county where there's a high proportion of people who are teens that are homeless or families that are homeless we have our street medicine team that goes out to different encampments as well as our respite which is a place for people to recover when they're coming out of the hospital. So, they can recover with dignity instead of recovering on the street and ending up back in the hospital. Our mobile units and our clinics span pretty much the entire county from Mountain View all the way down to Gilroy and at all of these sites we provide multidisciplinary care. So, we'll have medical doctor’s, mental health providers, psychiatrists, psychologists, social workers, nurses, outreach workers pretty much every discipline that we can think of so that we can wrap around people take care of them improve their quality of life and hopefully end their homelessness.

SH: Thank you so much. Dr. Gilotra you have mentioned the street medicine program which is also our back-medicine program and this program is so it is such a key to what we do because we're able to meet our folks out in the where they are. Can you talk a little bit more about that program and the team?

MG: Sure, sure so our street medicine program has been around for many years yeah and its goal is to really go to where people are and provide the medical care that they need where they are. So, it's made up of a medical doctor a nurse and outreach worker and sometimes a mental health specialist. And we you know we call it our street medicine program or a backpack program because that's really what it is. We load up medications and wound supplies and anything that we need in backpacks and we hike to different encampments all across the county. Some you know we'll see people sleeping on the side of the road we'll see people staying deep in the woods or way down the trail and the the goal of the program is to take care of people's acute needs. So, they have a wound or they are feeling sick or kind of whatever those acute needs are and then over time we've learned that a lot of people who are in encampment have a lot of trouble seeking regular medical care. So, we've started to bring primary care to the streets as well so we'll manage their diabetes well manage their high blood pressure their heart failure take care of their cancer screening all of those things that you would go to our doctor’s office or mobile unit for we'll take that into the field. The and then more recently we have been doing a lot more work around COVID. So, we've been going out to these encampments and all these places to teach people about the virus. And that was specially important in the early parts of the pandemic but also to test people or provide treatment or therapy whatever is needed.

SH: Great and Derek you are a part of the backpack medicine team that goes out to the encampments and some of the other shelter sites can you tell us a little bit about your role as the community health outreach specialist and what you do as part of the team.

DE: Yes, so my role as a community outreach specialist especially with the backpack team I provide transportation for the team I scout some of the sites before we we go to the sites. Then once we get there I help provide more of the social needs for some of the patients that we do see. As outreach specialists also do case management so while the patient might be visiting with the doctor Barbara out in their camp meant I'm talking to other patients that are getting ready to speak to the doctor or might may have some medical needs but as they're waiting I'm also you know talking to them explaining our program and explaining what I do as a community outreach specialist especially on a social part. So, which can be if a patient basically needs to get to the DMV and has lost their ID we'll make plans for for that from them for me to transport them in and make those needs possible and then overall also providing like a assessing the area making sure everybody safe while the doctors are attending to the patient and just being there to help out with the patients and let them know more what I do and then make sure that if there's any follow-up like for follow-up appointments with a lot of a lot of them will have. I will make sure that they could get to their follow-up appointments or also dropping off meds if they get prescribed meds that day they might need to take that they might not be able to pick them up so I will provide and pick up the medication and bring them back. And help you know bridge that gap for the follow-up appointments and the care that they may need that day.

SH: Great and all the work that you've done is such such a key to make sure that our patients are healthy

DE: Yeah

SH: That's that's great. Dr. Gilotra you had mentioned also, there's been some testing that's also done at the encampments can you talk a little bit about VHHP efforts around testing yeah so

MG: We basically have been testing in two strategies early on in the pandemic we had our backpack teams going out there doing education we actually ended up adding another backpack team to have two full-time teams teaching people about the virus and then testing people if they were symptomatic and I has testing capabilities have increased we've deputized three teams that are made up of nurses to basically hit up every congregate shelter every large encampment any place where homeless people are together to test them whether they're symptomatic or not. So, we offer this testing we've been doing it for almost two months and we have and program is also far operated very well some people have been tested multiple times and we've reached pretty much all the places in the county where almost people are congregating we plan to continue this effort as long as it's required to help control the pandemic and Derik part of the major work that you do is around providing education for a COVID- 19 and also to engage folks that want to get tested. How are you doing that to engage our our population and ensuring that they are getting tested?

DE: So, like doctor culture said we have three team’s valley homeless in the county we have going out right now. Team team team a is pretty much focused on the shelter's and the motels and then we have a team B and team C which is going out to all the encampments in Santa Clara County. My team is team B so I'm one of the teams that are going out into the cabins I'm partner up with uh two travel nurses and a community worker and we're going out to the camp it's where we announce who we are we're very well known for doing backpack medicine for valley homeless. So, we announce who we are we're valley medical and we let them know we're here to test for coronavirus a lot of them know about the coronavirus but there's a lot of patients out there that don't know so we educate them about it and then once we do that we ask them if they'd like to be tested. If they don't like if they decide not to be tested we go ahead and let them know we'll be coming back to the site every month and then as well we just go ahead and give them the education of some of the symptoms of COVID and I've let them know that also we're partnering up with our officer supportive housing that will help them out too if they do become pop if they're if they are positive I will help out with them putting them in a motel and so they could quarantine for a lot of testing over the last few over the last few months now so as you're going out there what happens when you do find some someone who test is positive I know Derek mentioned a little bit about that.

MG: Yeah yeah I can add a little bit. So, basically when a positive test result comes back or even if someone has symptoms and we're waiting on that result we definitely want to make sure that they are in a safe place and we want to decrease the risk of any spread. So, we will safely transport that person to one of our quarantine sites to basically keep them safe and keep the community safe. And we will keep them there until their symptoms are gone or if they test positive until they are appropriately cleared by Public Health and we've worked very closely in collaboration with the office supportive housing and the city of San Jose to be able to staff these sites and provide pretty much all of that person's needs so there's no reason for them to have to leave that quarantine situation to look at their food laundry. Kind of services they need really to protect the community.

SH: Great and Derek or Dr. Gilotra you know we've talked about serving our homeless individuals and stuff is there a story that you that really stands out to you during this pandemic that you know resulted in an accessible successful outcome but you want to share.

DE: Yeah there's there's a story about a couple weeks ago my team Team B were out I'm in one of their encampments and you know doing our testing and there was a gentleman older gentleman standing off to the side probably mid 50s  he's the exactly a few questions you know basically what we were doing out there we explained that we're testing for the coronavirus at that point time he decided not to get tested so why the nurses were testing one of the other patients I was talking to the gentleman and he stated that he was newly newly homeless due to the coronavirus. He mentioned that his car had recently broke down and that the line of work he was in is have some background working with concerts and concert venues and basically with corona going on there's no concerts going on so he hasn't had no work which ended up being one of the main reasons why he temporary homeless at this point. So, I went ahead and explained our program he had never heard of our program expanding our programs playing what we do and in that conversation and he started getting more relaxed and was really surprised at our county and and provides a lot of programs for homelessness and and support and so once in the conversation once he's learning more about that he started feeling more comfortable and he did decide to go ahead and test for the coronavirus. And and again you know gave him a few numbers to call given a number for off supportive housing they do have a hotline so people cook all try to get a shelter bed or something and he's very pleased about that and and like I said he end up getting tested so I think that was a good outcome.

SH: Yeah that's great our program has been around for quite some time and there's still a lot of folks out there that don't know about us and so it's great that we're able to engage them and bring them in We certainly have out still a lot to do to serve our homeless population here in Santa Clara County but it's also  gratifying to know that we're able to make a positive impact on some on some of the folks that we're serving so thank you so much to you both for being here  today. If you know of anyone who's homeless please refer them to our program they can go to scvmc.org and search for a VA HHP also for the latest information on COVID news please visit the county's website at www.sccgov.org slash coronavirus and please continue to shelter in place wear your masks when you're outside and wash your hands and especially take care of one another thank you so much.

DE: Thank you

MG: Thank you.