Health Care for Homeless helping community every Wednesday

SAVANNAH, Ga. (WTOC) - Wednesday, doctors at Memorial Health will be heading out of the hospital to practice medicine.

Once a week the group of doctors goes out into the community to provide health care to the homeless.

It is a pretty simple concept. You can come here for free to get seen by a doctor - the services are provided by residents at Memorial Health as a part of their curriculum.

Dr. Robert Pallay, the program director of the family residency program at Memorial Health says for his residents to be successful family doctors, he wants to get them out into the community.

Dr. Pallay started the Health Care for the Homeless program and says this is the only way that most of the homeless population will ever get the medical help they need.

Each week they could see anywhere from five to 15 people, but they know there are more out there that need the help and they want to see even more people stopping by and coming back for care.

“The concepts of street medicine are that if you do it correctly you can basically do continuity care where they live..they could have diabetes that is out of control or their blood pressure is too high or they are depressed or they don’t feel well or they have various infectious diseases and things like that so you know we will take care of those things,” said Dr. Paallay.

They partner with JC Lewis HealthCare and other mental health professionals to help the patients they see each week.

Right now, the program happens every Wednesday morning and rotates around the city at different locations, but they hope to grow the program to even more days a week.

Wednesday they will be at Savannah Baptist at 704 Wheaton Street. Wednesday, Feb. 15, they will be at Social Apostle at 502 Liberty Street. Then Wednesday, Feb. 22, they will be at Emmaus House at 18 Abercorn Street.

You can also call 912.495.8887 for more information.