The people living in the Near East Side of Detroit, within the service area of Detroit Riverview Hospital, faced that dilemma on a large scale last year when the hospital was closed. 70,000 residents were left to decide where to go for their medical care.

During the past year, a collaboration of hospital, health center, and community organizations, known as the East Side Planning Team, has developed a way of filling the void left by Detroit Riverview’s closure and through a new approach to care – a medical home. In a sense, many people in our society are medically homeless – they don’t have a place to go for medical care so they use the emergency department. About 15,000 of the residents of the Near East Side don’t have physicians and are likely to use hospital emergency facilities for primary or chronic care. And too often, they will wait until the need is urgent.