‘Staffing challenges’ are impacting Tacoma’s homeless healthcare program
AI-generated summary reviewed by our newsroom.
- Staffing departures disrupted Tacoma’s street medicine rollout despite assurances.
- Program launched weekly mobile deployments in May; aims to scale by October.
- Healthcare access demand remains high as 2,661 unhoused counted in 2024 survey.
A Tacoma program intended to bring healthcare to the unhoused faces further challenges as several employees have left the program just months after it started.
The Tacoma-Pierce County Health Department maintains the staffing changes will not impact the planned rollout of the program.
In October 2024, TPCHD and the City of Tacoma announced the Street Medicine Pilot Program — funded by a $1 million grant from the Washington State Health Care Authority.
Nearly six months later, the program had yet to become fully operational as it was slowly hiring healthcare professionals to be a part of the team.
In May, Bianca Shell, program manager for the street medicine program who was hired in March, told the Tacoma Pierce County Coalition to End Homelessness the program would likely not be fully staffed until September 2025.
At the time, Shell reported the program had hired two peer-support specialists, a homelessness liaison and a nurse with a behavioral health background. She said the department was in negotiations with a medical doctor and a nurse practitioner.
During Tacoma City Council’s Community Vitality and Safety Committee meeting on July 10, Chantell Harmon Reed, director of public health for TPCHD, attributed some of the delays to full implementation of the street-medicine program to the “bureaucratic process” related to contracting.
Harmon Reed told the committee the program had launched a “full deployment” as of May 26. She described the “full deployment” as a cargo van full of supplies to distribute and a converted van serving as a medical-exam area.
Harmon Reed said the “full deployment” would be operational once a week until September as the street-medicine team tried to understand how it will regularly operate. By September, the street medicine team planned to do three “full deployments” a week before expanding to four a week after October.
During a Pierce County Coalition to End Homelessness meeting on Aug. 29, Shell reported the program would be facing “staffing challenges” after losing a registered nurse.
In July, a physician associated with the street medicine program also left TPCHD.
Shell said the program would be facing short-term “staffing challenges and availability” issues until the advanced nurse practitioner the program hired months ago is able to join the program in the coming weeks.
Kenny Via, a spokesperson for TPCHD told The News Tribune as of Aug. 29 the program has a health officer, James Miller, as the medical director of the program, as well as a program manager, an advanced registered nurse practitioner, a peer navigator and an outreach worker.
“Our Street Medicine program continues to offer comprehensive medical services throughout Tacoma,” Via wrote in an email to The News Tribune. “We plan to hire a registered nurse soon. Our services and timeline for scaling up the program have not changed.”
Via said the physician who left the program in July was hired in May. When asked for comment on why the employees left the program, he said it was against department policies to comment.
“In the case of the RN, however, we had been contracting for that position. We are now planning to hire someone directly, which should greatly improve our team’s efficiency,” he told The News Tribune.
Previously, some outreach volunteers expressed concerns the street-medicine team did not provide a phone number it could be reached at when outreach workers find someone who needs healthcare on the street.
Shell told the Pierce County Coalition to End Homelessness on Aug. 29 the program was working to develop a phone number for the team as well as a QR-code which links to a form people could fill out when they or someone they know needs healthcare from the street-medicine team.
On June 3, Jake Nau, the homeless outreach manager for St. Vincent DePaul, told Pierce County Council members at least 50% of the unhoused people he meets are either over 55 or are experiencing a physical or mental disability they either were living with before becoming unhoused or have incurred through their experience living on the streets.
During the 2025 survey of those living unhoused in Pierce County, volunteers counted 2,955 people living unhoused in a single night. Of those surveyed, 27% reported having a mental health condition, 19% reported a chronic health condition and 20% reported having a physical disability.
According to the U.S. Interagency Council on Homelessness (USICH), people who experience homelessness have an average life expectancy of around 50, almost 20 years lower than people who are housed. The Centers for Disease Control & Prevention states that people experiencing homelessness are at a greater risk of infectious and chronic illness, poor mental health and substance abuse.
