Dr. Katz believes that the biggest benefit to low-income patients will come from meeting them where they are and providing essential services like housing and food support without obstacles.
What does Dr. Katz believe will offer the biggest benefit to low-income patients? short answer full sentence.
"I know I've painted a bleak picture of the care of low income patients, but I want you to know how rewarding I find it to work in a safety net system, and my deep belief that we can make the system responsive to the needs of low income patients, the starting point has to be to meet patients where they are, provide services without obstacles, and provide patients what they need, not what we think they need. It's impossible for me to take good care of a patient who is homeless living on the street. The right prescription for a homeless patient is housing
in Los Angeles, we housed 4700
chronically homeless persons suffering from medical illness, mental illness, addiction. When we housed them, we found that overall health care costs, including the housing decreased. That's because they had many fewer hospital visits, both in the emergency room and on the inpatient service, and we gave them back their dignity, no extra charge for that, for people who do not have a steady support supply of food, especially those who are diabetic, safety net systems are experimenting with a variety of solutions, including food pantries at primary care clinics, distributing maps to community food banks and soup kitchens, and in New York City, we've hired a bunch of enrollers to get our patients into the Supplemental Nutrition program known as food stamps."
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