Changes in health and health care utilization following eviction from public housing.
Donna J Biederman, Peter Callejo-Black, Christian Douglas and 4 others
PMID 34492122WHAT IT FOUND
Evicted public housing heads of households had more diagnosed health conditions and more emergency and inpatient care after eviction.
Nurses should ask about housing loss when health worsens and document it.
Key findings
01All ten diagnostic categories increased after eviction, with five showing statistically significant increases: Chronic Top 7, Chronic Other, Acute, Mental Health, and Preventive.
02Total hospital admissions and total ED visits increased significantly after eviction. ED revisits at 30, 60, and 90 days increased by mean differences of 1.99, 1.26, and 0.75 but were not significant. Total bed days decreased, but the change was not significant.
03Thirty-four evicted participants entered homeless services after eviction. Twelve used single services and the remainder used family services. Emergency shelter was used by 10 single persons and 18 families. Rapid rehousing was used by 16 families and one single person.
STILL TO COME
How it was doneWhat they foundWhat it means for RNs
Read the rest of this summary
You get three full summaries a month, free, and we do not ask for a card. Search, the TL;DRs and your library stay unlimited either way.
What it does not show
Eviction status came from financial records, so some evicted residents may have been missed. Only people with health encounters at the included health system were analysed, so residents who used other providers or left the area were not represented. The final analysis used 152 of 258 evicted heads of households because they needed encounters both before and after eviction. The study did not allow risk assessment or modeling because the sample was small. Housing instability was poorly documented: less than 8% of participants had a documented social diagnosis reflecting housing instability. The study was limited to one public housing authority and one health system.
Declared interests
No author conflict-of-interest statement is given. The article is labelled as supported by NIH extramural research.
The easy way to misread this
Do not conclude that eviction caused the health increases. This was a pre/post record-based study of one housing authority and one health system, and only 152 of 258 evicted heads of households had records both before and after eviction.