I attended the National Health Care for the Homeless Council meeting last week and learned an amazing amount. One thing I wanted to share specifically with this group. HRSA has put out several new Policy Information Notices (PINs) to aid Health Centers in applications and updates. One in particular, ‘Defining Scope of Practice’, has ‘updated the definition of a service site.’ In this definition it allows mobile medical vans to be defined as a site, thereby allowing the vans to go to different sites/change routes without having to submit paperwork with every change. There is no provision to define Medical Street Outreach teams. There was a suggestion to encourage HRSA to define ‘Mobile Health Teams’ in a similar manner as the vans (it appears that the term Outreach has previously been defined as not including a direct medical component), allowing them to function as a site. This would include those teams that supply services in outdoor settings, encampments, etc… I thought this was particularly pertinent to this group. As numbers often talk – I would direct you to the HRSA website (http://bphc.hrsa.gov) to review and consider submitting a comment, which are due by Oct. 12.
Thank you!