Accuracy of electronic health record food insecurity, housing instability, and financial strain screening in adult primary care

Public health, care delivery organizations, federal agencies, and researchers have advocated for better collection of patient social risk factor information. Social factors can determine referrals to community partners, increase awareness of patients’ needs, measure population health, or improve risk prediction models.

Popular electronic health record (EHR) systems include screening questionnaires assessing various social risk factors. While these multidomain screening questionnaires are commonly used in practice, their accuracy has not been established. We assessed the accuracy of EHR-based multidomain questionnaires using single-domain questionnaires on food insecurity, housing instability, and financial strain as external standards.