These Doctors Perform Daily Miracles, No Hospital in Sight

Dr. Ouyang is an emergency physician and an associate professor at Columbia.

Last July, I visited Pittsburgh Mercy’s Operation Safety Net, the street medicine program founded by Dr. Jim Withers. In the 1990s, Dr. Withers began slipping out of the hospital in the middle of the night to provide medical care to people sleeping outside — on sidewalks, in encampments, under overpasses. What began as one doctor’s scrappy practice spread to more than 150 programs across the country.

Street medicine embodies what health care should be: tending to those who need it most. It is also a stark indictment of our society........

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