"Beyond the state-of-the-art equipment and flat-screen televisions, the new facility will give patients more space and reinforce the idea that they are people who matter."
EVERYONE MATTERS in this world!
That's why HOMELESSNESS is a NATIONAL SCANDAL!!!
NO ONE SHOULD BE HOMELESS in America -- and especially not VETERANS!!!
I see a couple of them walking the town streets, folks!
And then there are the RICH!
Sigh! AmeriKa stinks!
"Hospital for homeless moves its own home" by Andrew Ryan, Globe Staff | July 9, 2008
The move was a distance of only 2 miles, but it involved 70 patients on crutches, canes, wheelchairs, and stretchers. They suffered from broken wrists and legs, blindness, severe diabetes, end-stage cirrhosis of the liver, chronic lung disease, and an array of mental illnesses.
As a group, they have been afflicted by a common condition perhaps as hazardous as any disease: homelessness.
But yesterday their day was brightened when the Boston Health Care for the Homeless Program departed its old inpatient medical respite care facility in Jamaica Plain for a gleaming, $42 million complex in the South End.
"Oh, my God, it's unbelievable - it's like the Ritz-Carlton," said Nancy Kenney, 46, a self-described former street drunk who wore a splint on her fractured wrist. "There's TVs in every room. To me, it's like we are being treated like somebody in Hollywood instead of somebody sleeping on the street."
Jean Yawkey Place on Massachusetts Avenue has become the new home of an agency that serves 10,000 people annually. The facility, which once housed the city morgue, includes a primary-care clinic with 14 exam rooms and a five-chair dental service.
The move yesterday took 4 1/2 hours as doctors and nurses emptied the 94-bed Barbara McInnis House on Walnut Avenue. In convoys of hospital vans, they transported the 70 patients to the 104-bed Jean Yawkey Place, where doctors were ready with oxygen and equipment for checking the blood-sugar level of diabetics.
It was a bittersweet day for the staff, who had fond memories of the respite care clinic in Jamaica Plain, a "tired building" that "had the look and feel of an old nursing home," said Barry Bock, director of operations. The top floors of the new building that house the clinic will still be called the Barbara McInnis House, for a nurse who spent 30 years working with the homeless.
Beyond the state-of-the-art equipment and flat-screen televisions, the new facility will give patients more space and reinforce the idea that they are people who matter, Bock said.
But at least one thing will not change.
"I think what won't be different is that spirit that makes us unique," Bock said. "I think that spirit will carry over. It moved with us."