As homelessness explodes, so does the number of pregnant mothers living on the streets. Street medicine doctors offer them a chance to have healthy babies — and perhaps keep them.
Five days after giving birth, Melissa Crespo was already back on the streets, recovering in a damp, litter-strewn water tunnel, when she got the call from the hospital. Her baby, Kyle, who had been born three months prematurely, was in respiratory failure in the neonatal intensive care unit and fighting for his life. The odds had been against Kyle long before he was born last summer.
Medi-Cal had been denying claims because providers had treated patients in the field, not in hospitals or clinics. “We didn’t even realize our system was denying those claims, so we updated thousands of codes to say street medicine providers can treat people in a homeless shelter, in a mobile unit, in temporary lodging or on the streets,” said Jacey Cooper, the state Medicaid director, who this month leaves for the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services to work on federal Medicaid policy.
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