In a bid to reduce the number of hospital beds being taken up by the homeless and drug addicts in Vancouver, doctors will soon be making house calls to those who live in single room occupancy (SRO) hotels in the Downtown Eastside.

Many residents of the Downtown Eastside are seriously ill, often the result of drug use and hard living on the streets, said Lorna Howes, the director of acute and community mental health for Vancouver with the Vancouver Coastal Health authority. By the time they get to a hospital, she said, they often need long-term care.

"Sometimes they are there for months and months and months because they are so sick by the time they are admitted," Howes said Tuesday at a symposium on mental health in Vancouver.

"The whole purpose is to intervene early when things are happening and get that treatment early — ASAP."

The pressure on hospitals right now is unsustainable, she said.

For example, at St. Paul's in downtown Vancouver, one out of every four beds is being used to treat the homeless, drug addicts and the mentally ill, said Howes.

The province's chief medical health officer, Dr. Perry Kendall, said the initiative is a concrete solution.

"If you use those resources more effectively, yes, you've cleared up space — cleared up theoretically one in four beds and whatever medical and nursing care it takes to look after people to divert to other causes …" Kendall said.

At the moment, only eight SRO's in the Downtown Eastside will be receiving house calls, but the goal is to get many more of the neighbourhood's 2,100 residents on the list, Howes said.