Over Utilization of the Emergency Room
The emergency department is a section of a hospital dedicated to treat unforeseen and unplanned medical acuity. An emergency department is equipped to treat life -threatening and broad spectrum of medical conditions. Unfortunately, The broad medical provision of the Emergency Department attracts non-emergency use by homeless population members with mental health and substance abuse disorders. Lam, Arora and Menchine (2016) reported homeless individuals and member’s with mental health condition use the emergency department as their primary medical service and for non-emergency related conditions which results in high utilization and cost. Pearson. Mackelprang, Qiu and Rivara (2015) reported understanding
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This limitation ranges from the different frequency of homeless, frequency of emergency department visits, mental health disorders and physical health diagnoses, types of insurance coverage and the definition of homeless. According to Brown and Steinman (2013) many emergency departments do not obtain housing status because it is challenging to track the degree, frequency, range and definition of homelessness. Fazel et al (2015) stated the different definition of homelessness creates a challenges to the data collection and tracking of the homeless population. Hwang (2013) reported the limitation to gathering data on homeless individuals is that some individuals decline to acknowledge their housing status during emergency department visits or decline to participate in a meal or shelter program. The studies did not identify that homelessness may be situational limited to a specific timeframe in a patient’s …show more content…
B., Fields. J. M., Santana. A., Wasserman. D., Borman. L., Scott. K. C. (2014). The urban homeless: super-users of the emergency department. Pub Med, 17(6):366-71. doi: 10.1089/pop.2013.0118.
Lam. C. N., Arora. S., Menchine M (2016) Increased 30-Day Emergency Department Revisits Among Homeless Patients with Mental Health Conditions. Western Journal of Emergency Medicine, 17(5) 607–612.
Lin, W., Bharel, M., Zhang, J., O’Connell, E., and Clark, R. E. (2015) Frequent Emergency Department Visits and Hospitalization Among Homeless People With Medicaid: Implications for Medicaid Expansion. American Journal of Public Health, 105, S716-S722.
Mackelprang. J. L., Qiu. Q., Rivara. F. P., (2015) Predictors of Emergency Department Visits and Inpatient Admissions Among Homeless and Unstably Housed Adolescents and Young Adults. Retrieved from https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/26492212
Morris. D. M., and Gordon J. A. (2015) The role of the emergency department in the care of homeless and disadvantaged populations. Retrieved from http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/16982342 Pearson. D., Bruggman, A. R., Haukoos, J. S. (2007) Out-of-Hospital and Emergency Department Utilization by Adult Homeless Patients. Annals of Emergency Medicine, 50 (6), 646-652. DOI: