Formerly homeless man tells Anchorage commission hospitals left frostbite patients outside

Jamie Lopez told Anchorage's Housing, Homeless and Neighborhood Development Commission in October that Alaska Regional and Providence hospitals discharged frostbite patients onto the street, with Alaska Regional the worse of the two, based on what he had heard.

"If they didn't have a bed, they just dropped the person and, you know, they're left outside," said Lopez, a formerly homeless East Anchorage resident, describing a man he knows who had three limb amputations.

Alaska's acute frostbite guidelines, which tracked 327 patients hospitalized for frostbite-specific injuries from 2020 through 2024, say discharge decisions should weigh whether a patient has a safe destination and adequate support. Alaska Regional's website says its discharge planning involves case managers and social workers who coordinate community resources.

Lopez said frostbite discharges had not come up when the Health Department described a Nov. 6 online lunch-and-learn on cold-related injuries. He asked officials to ensure patients are not left outside again.

A state analysis found unhoused people were 8.3 times more likely to sustain a cold exposure injury than housed residents between 2012 and 2021. Nearly one in four Alaskans hospitalized for cold injuries in that period were unhoused, the same analysis found.

Lopez also urged outreach beyond a telephone model, saying displaced people often lack working phones and distrust outreach workers, and that paid workers who have experienced homelessness themselves work best.

Earlier, Thea Agnew-Bemben of the mayor's office said the Assembly approved accepting just over $3 million in state Rural Health Transformation Program money to spend by June, funding electronic health records for city clinical teams and a hospital-shelter referral pilot.