Anchorage to pilot hospital-to-shelter referrals amid frostbite concerns

Anchorage plans to pilot a new way for hospitals to refer patients to city shelters, using part of just over $3 million in state health money the Assembly agreed to accept.

The referral tool "will hopefully really improve the way that hospitals can interact with our shelters," Thea Agnew-Bemben of the mayor's office told the city's Housing, Homeless and Neighborhood Development Commission in October. The money, from the state's Rural Health Transformation Program, has to be spent by June and will also move the city's clinical teams onto electronic health records.

The city is also adding shelter beds through the end of November to reach its full winter surge, she said.

Unhoused Alaskans were 8.3 times more likely than housed residents to suffer a cold injury between 2012 and 2021, and nearly one in four Alaskans hospitalized for cold injuries in that period were unhoused, according to a state analysis. Alaska's frostbite guidelines, which tracked 327 patients hospitalized for frostbite from 2020 through 2024, say discharge decisions should weigh whether a patient has a safe place to go.

During public comment, a formerly homeless East Anchorage resident told the commission he'd heard of frostbite patients being discharged onto the street when no shelter bed was available. He said a man he knows has had three limb amputations, and he asked the city to make sure "those people are not left in the community."

He also said many people outside don't have phones or can't charge them, and that reaching them takes people they trust.

No one from the city responded to his comments at the meeting.