Since the 1980s California hospitals have been facing the increasingly difficult challenge of finding appropriate shelter settings for increasing numbers of homeless patients who are discharged from acute-care settings. Hospitals have worked and will continue to work diligently in their communities to solve this vexing problem. AB 2745, signed into law in late 2006, mandated that the regional hospital associations invite key stakeholders to planning meetings to improve the post hospital transition of homeless patients and then compile the recommendations in a document by January 2008. This document fulfills the mandate of AB 2745.

It is a rich document, which can be helped further by the support of the California legislature, and work will be ongoing.