Investing in Our Members

One of the main goals of AbsoluteCare is to reduce a member’s need to visit the emergency department. Insecurity—housing, food, job—is one of the main reasons for these ED visits. That’s where our Member Fund can make a dramatic difference.

Mr. W is a member of our Philadelphia center. He struggles with homelessness and was, like so many others in this country, using the hospital as shelter. By late October, he had visited the ED 29 times.

On October 26, his AbsoluteCare social worker helped find housing and used the Member Fund to purchase household needs—a bed, cleaning and personal hygiene supplies, and food.

When Mr. W’s social worker visited him in his new rented room, Mr. W cried. In his 10 years of living on the street, he said, no one had ever helped him like this. He was very excited to be able to take a shower, a simple task, that most of us take for granted.

Using our Member Fund to provide Mr. W with stable housing and food, we were able to reduce his hospital ED visits from 29 in October, down to 4 in November. #beyondmedicine