At the end of June, the longtime medical service provider Wilshire Health and Community Services, which offered everything from hospice and home health care to community services like counseling and transportation, closed its doors, leaving clients looking for help elsewhere.
One Wilshire service, the Good Neighbor Program, served an average of 172 clients per day. Executive Director of the San Luis Obispo Council of Governments (SLOCOG), Peter Rodgers, explained it’s a huge loss due to its cost-effective model of utilizing volunteers as drivers.
“Yeah, we frankly anticipate a tsunami of calls," Rodgers said in response to the closure of that program.
Seniors used the service for things like grocery shopping or getting to their medical appointments. According to SLOCOG, the average user is 77 years old; 75% are female, 64% live alone, 40% are low-income, and 67% live with chronic medical conditions and/or mobility barriers.
“It costs a lot of money to provide ride assistance when you're paying a driver. We don't know exactly how we're going to solve this gap," Rodgers explained. He also mentioned that for those who are in search of rideshare options, they can visit rideshare.org.
However, other services like home health and hospice care are being transferred over to organizations like Dignity Health Home Health and Hospice Care, getting 50% of the patients from Wilshire and sending offers out to 30% of their staff. According to Wilshire, on any given day, they could have at least 250 clients.
“Our staff had to stretch to pick them up," said Kathleen Sullivan, VP of Post Acute Care with Dignity Health Central Coast. "But as far as I know, we didn't see any gaps in care in the ones that we were able to take on.”
Sullivan explained that while it’s a loss to lose a community partner like Wilshire Health, both they and other service providers have been able to find care for home health and hospice patients. Sullivan said that their home health and hospice care has between 650-750 clients at any given time.
“The home health and hospice components, we're there and we have their staff on board that joined and we'll continue to take great care of the existing patients and be there for those physicians," Sullivan said.
SLOCOG is still navigating the full transportation impact and will look for a solution come October when they go in front of the Board of Supervisors, while other community service programs are either in danger of being lost or being picked up by another service provider like Transitions-Mental Health.
