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Homelessness Risk Screening Tool for Emergency Department Patients

Person lying on sidewalk under a card board box

In a recent issue of Health Services Research, Dr. Tod Mijanovich and colleagues report on the development of an interview tool for screening New York City emergency department patients for risk of future homelessness. The goal was to develop a short, easily understood set of questions that hospital staff could quickly administer to identify individuals at risk of entering a homeless shelter in the next year, in order to target services and reduce future homelessness episodes. The resulting three-item instrument had 83% sensitivity in identifying future homeless shelter stays.

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