Understanding Transitions in Care from Hospital to Homeless Shelter: a Mixed-Methods, Community-Based Participatory Approach

BACKGROUND

Coordinated transitions from hospital to shelter for homeless patients may improve outcomes, yet patient-centered data to guide interventions are lacking.

OBJECTIVES

To understand patients?? experiences of transitions from hospital to a homeless shelter, and determine aspects of these experiences associated with perceived quality of these transitions.

DESIGNS

Mixed methods with a community-based participatory research approach, in partnership with personnel and clients from a homeless shelter.

PARTICIPANTS

Ninety-eight homeless individuals at a shelter who reported at least one acute care visit to an area hospital in the last year.

APPROACH

Using semi-structured interviews, we collected quantitative and qualitative data about transitions in care from the hospital to the shelter. We analyzed qualitative data using the constant comparative method to determine patients?? perspectives on the discharge experience, and we analyzed quantitative data using frequency analysis to determine factors associated with poor outcomes from patients?? perspective.

KEY RESULTS

Using qualitative analysis, we found homeless participants with a recent acute care visit perceived an overall lack of coordination between the hospital and shelter at the time of discharge. They also described how expectations of suboptimal coordination exacerbate delays in seeking care, and made three recommendations for improvement: 1) Hospital providers should consider housing a health concern; 2) Hospital and shelter providers should communicate during discharge planning; 3) Discharge planning should include safe transportation. In quantitative analysis of recent hospital experiences, 44?% of participants reported that housing status was assessed and 42?% reported that transportation was discussed. Twenty-seven percent reported discharge occurred after dark; 11?% reported staying on the streets with no shelter on the first night after discharge.

CONCLUSIONS

Homeless patients in our community perceived suboptimal coordination in transitions of care from the hospital to the shelter. These patients recommended improved assessment of housing status, communication between hospital and shelter providers, and arrangement of safe transportation to improve discharge safety and avoid discharge to the streets without shelter.     

A Roadmap and Best Practices for Organizations to Reduce Racial and Ethnic Disparities in Health Care

Over the past decade, researchers have shifted their focus from documenting health care disparities to identifying solutions to close the gap in care. Finding Answers: Disparities Research for Change, a national program of the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, is charged with identifying promising interventions to reduce disparities. Based on our work conducting systematic reviews of the literature, evaluating promising practices, and providing technical assistance to health care organizations, we present a roadmap for reducing racial and ethnic disparities in care. The roadmap outlines a dynamic process in which individual interventions are just one part. It highlights that organizations and providers need to take responsibility for reducing disparities, establish a general infrastructure and culture to improve quality, and integrate targeted disparities interventions into quality improvement efforts. Additionally, we summarize the major lessons learned through the Finding Answers program. We share best practices for implementing disparities interventions and synthesize cross-cutting themes from 12 systematic reviews of the literature. Our research shows that promising interventions frequently are culturally tailored to meet patients' needs, employ multidisciplinary teams of care providers, and target multiple leverage points along a patient's pathway of care. Health education that uses interactive techniques to deliver skills training appears to be more effective than traditional didactic approaches. Furthermore, patient navigation and engaging family and community members in the health care process may improve outcomes for minority patients. We anticipate that the roadmap and best practices will be useful for organizations, policymakers, and researchers striving to provide high-quality equitable care.     

Percutaneous coronary interventions and cardiovascular outcomes for patients with chronic total occlusions

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