The blood clot in Jackie Fonseca’s lung didn’t kill her, but she figures she’d be dead if the doctors at Valley Medical Center had sent her home to recover.

That’s because Fonseca didn’t have a home to go to. She had been living on the streets for a year after making what she refers to as “a lot of bad choices.”

If you’ve ever stayed in a hospital, you know how good it feels to go home. There’s nothing like your own comfortable bed, where you can recover in peace without people poking and prodding you and trying to feed you gray meat and gelatinous vegetables.

A hospital is no place to heal.

But suppose your home was under a bridge and your bed was a dirty sleeping bag. What if you didn’t have a clean place to change your surgical dressing or prepare healthy meals? How long would it be before you were back in the hospital?

Studies show that homeless people have high rates of readmittance to hospitals.

Healing in safety

That’s why the Medical Respite Center was such a great idea. It offers homeless people a place where they can recuperate from surgery or broken bones, to gain strength while undergoing cancer treatment. Nurses and counselors help them keep track of their medications and get to doctor appointments.

The 15-bed respite center, one of only a handful in the country, is in a wing of the Boccardo Reception Center in San Jose, a one-stop homeless services center run by EHC LifeBuilders. A collaborative including EHC, Santa Clara County and nine private hospitals supports it.

For Fonseca, the center has been a lifesaver.

“If it weren’t for this place, and this is honestly from my heart, I would be dead or under a bridge somewhere,” she said. The small, energetic 76-year-old invited me to her tidy room. She showed me the afghan she’s knitting for her bed. She plans to knit 15 of them, one for each bed in the center.

“I’m hoping when I get out of here to have a place of my own,” she said.

That’s one of the center’s goals, to get folks off the street for good. About 50 people have stayed at the center since it opened this past October, and all have moved into permanent housing, said Cheryl Ho, medical director for the Valley Homeless Healthcare Program.

Making a connection

While patients are recovering, case managers look for subsidized housing, sign people up for Medi-Cal, Social Security and other benefits, and help them feel connected.

“It’s the kind of support you never have when you’re living on the street,” said Audrey Kuang, a physician who runs the Boccardo Center clinic.

Before the center opened, Kuang kept homeless people in VMC longer than she would have if they had homes to go to, at a cost of $2,000 a day. So far this year, the center has saved 261 days of hospital care, worth more than $500,000. A day at the center costs under $100.

But it’s harder to put a price on the lives saved, and that’s what Fonseca and Ramon Paz feel the center has done for them.

Paz, 65, is recovering after someone hit him in the head with a rock at a homeless encampment. Now, he says, he’s finished with the street.

“I guess it took something like that to knock it into my head that I have no business being out there,” he told me. “The people here have done everything for me. They have given me back my life.”

Contact Patty Fisher at pfisher@mercurynews.com or 408-920-5852.