PhD Study: Emergency department outcomes for patients experiencing homelessness in England: retrospective cross-sectional study
This research is led by Charlie Moss as part of her PhD Fellowship. For more information about Charlie please check out the PhD Fellowships pages
What we looked to do?
We aimed to generate evidence about the care patients experiencing homelessness receive at Accident & Emergency departments in England.
Why was it important?
Emergency departments (EDs) are an important point of access to health care for people experiencing homelessness. Much attention has been given to the frequency with which people experiencing homelessness attend the ED.
There has been much less investigation of the care they receive at the ED, particularly outside the United States, even though this may help to explain why some people experiencing homelessness attend frequently.
A recent study of 3,271 ED attendances by homeless patients at one hospital in the West Midlands found that 18.4% of patients left the ED before receiving treatment, and 1.2% of patients died in the ED. Both percentages are significantly higher than for the general population.
How we did it?
We used national hospital data to analyse attendances of all 131,358 people experiencing homelessness who presented at any ED in England over 2013-2018.
We used multiple regression to estimate the associations of patient characteristics with: waiting times, volumes of care received, re-attendance within seven days, and discharge destinations.
What we found:
Findings will be available late Summer 2022.
More information
PhD Fellow
Charlie Moss