M Health Fairview partnership with nonprofit guides homeless patients from the hospital to homes of their own

Thirty-eight-year old Katie from St. Paul is proud to show pictures of her two-bedroom apartment.

"I can have my daughter here, which is great. It’s the first time I could give her her own room," she said.

Katie, who only wants to use her first name for this story, experienced years of homelessness and says having her own apartment helped her get healthy.

"It’s allowed me to do a lot of other things in my life, like make friends and feel kind of normal," she said.

Katie is one of the success stories from a program called "Coming Home" out of M Health Fairview St. Joseph’s Hospital. M Health Fairview partners with Guild and Hearth Connections to run the program.

St. Joseph’s serves about 500 homeless patients in its emergency department and inpatient facilities each year. Rather than simply discharge each patient from the hospital, the program works with community partners to help patients find stability.

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"When you are worrying about basic survival each day, where to sleep, where to stay, getting food, those are extreme conditions that make it hard for a person to heal physically and mentally," said Jayne Conley Braun, director of clinical services at M Health Fairview.

The program has helped close to 40 patients since its inception in 2017. For those patients, it has reduced emergency room and inpatient facility visits by 70 percent.

"I didn’t have that view of how important home was until I didn’t have one. It’s the foundation for building everything else," Katie said.

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