Change in address in electronic health records as an early marker of homelessness.

ABSTRACT:

Introduction

Housing stability is a key health determinant and there is a need for early screening for instability with existing electronic health record (EHR) data to improve health outcomes. We aim to establish recorded address changes as a screening variable for housing instability and homelessness and to attempt to define the threshold of high churn.

Methods

Our study is a single-center cross-sectional study of EHR data (2018-2024) conducted at a US academic center with eleven sites across Chicago. We include patients 18 years or older with at least three hospital encounters over three different years. We define address churn as the number of address changes recorded in the EHR corrected to three-year intervals. We compare demographic and clinical characteristics of indi

SUBMITTER: Song J 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC11892818 | biostudies-literature | 2025

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature