Patients gather outside one of the five Circle The City mobile clinics stationed outside a soup kitchen for homeless people on May 30, 2024 in Phoenix. Based in the hottest big metro in America, Circle the City is taking measures to protect patients from life threatening heat illness as temperatures hit new highs. Homeless people accounted for nearly half of the record 645 heat-related deaths last year in Arizona’s Maricopa County, which encompasses metro Phoenix.
Dr. Liz Frye, vice chair of the Street Medicine Institute that provides training to hundreds of health care teams worldwide, said she didn’t know of groups other than Circle the City administering IVs on the street.As summers grow warmer, health providers from San Diego to New York are being challenged to better protect homeless patients.
“We go out every day and find them,” said nurse practitioner Perla Puebla. “We do their wound care, medication refills for diabetes, antibiotics, high blood pressure.” Temperatures this year have reached 115 degrees in metro Phoenix, where six heat-related deaths have been confirmed through June 22. Another 111 are under investigation.
Three times weekly, Fox treats infections, cleans wounds and manages chronic conditions in consultation with hospital colleagues. She said the prospect of more heat illness worries her. Circle the City, founded in 2012 by Sister Adele O’Sullivan, a physician and member of the Sisters of St. Joseph Carondelet, now has 260 employees, including 15 doctors, 13 physician assistants and 11 nurse practitioners. It annually sees 9,000 patients.
Often that’s a few weeks in respite care or, for less acute needs, a stay in one of a handful of medical beds at the downtown shelter for things like dressing changes for wounds. Someone who needs months to heal might go to a skilled nursing facility.
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