Identifying patients experiencing homelessness in an electronic health record and assessing qualification for medical respite: A five-year retrospective review

Our team developed a transitional care and medical respite program for people experiencing homelessness and designed a retrospective chart review study to more fully understand the unique needs of this population. Using four independent techniques, we identified individuals (N=1,656) who were experiencing homelessness during at least one hospital encounter (emergency department and/or in-patient admission) in a teaching hospital in the Southeastern United States over a five-year period. Data were manually abstracted from a random sample of patients to determine which patient encounters would or would not have qualified for medical respite if it had been available at the time. This article reports the methods used to identify people experiencing homelessness in the electronic health record, the data abstraction process, the cohort description, and the primary reasons patients would not have qualified for the medical respite program.