Health and care needs of hospitalised people experiencing homelessness: an inpatient audit

Abstract

People experiencing homelessness frequently die young, from preventable and treatable conditions. They experience significant barriers to healthcare and are often critically ill when admitted to hospital. A hospital admission is an opportunity to intervene and prevent premature mortality by providing compassionate care and facilitating access to safe onward accommodation and support. To quantify needs, a cross-sectional audit of inpatients experiencing homelessness across 15 acute hospital teams in London, was undertaken in February 2022. Integrated discharge and hospital homelessness teams were interviewed about each patient identified as homeless or vulnerably housed. Data was collected about patients' health, housing, support needs, and reasons for delayed discharges. Detailed information was gathered on 86 patients. There was a high level of clinical complexity and multimorbidity. For a safe discharge 60% of individuals were deemed to need accommodation providing high or medium level support and at the time of the audit, half were delayed discharges. There is an urgent need for a range of intermediate/step down and longer-term accommodation and support to enable safe appropriate discharge from hospital and start to address the huge inequity in health outcomes of this population. This paper includes recommendations for clinicians and commissioners.