Usage of unscheduled hospital care by homeless individuals in Dublin, Ireland: a cross-sectional study

Objectives: Homeless people lack a secure, stable place to live, and experience higher rates of serious illness than the housed population. Studies, mainly from the US, have reported increased use of unscheduled health care by homeless individuals.
We compared the use of unscheduled ED and inpatient care between housed and homeless hospital patients in a high-income European setting.
Setting: A large university teaching hospital serving the south inner city in Dublin, Ireland. Patient data is collected on an electronic patient record within the hospital.
Participants: We carried out an observational cross-sectional study using data on all ED visits (n=47,174) and all unscheduled admissions under the general medical take (n=7,031) in 2015.
Primary and Secondary Outcome Measures: The address field of the hospital’s electronic patient record was used to identify patients living in emergency accommodation or rough sleeping (hereafter referred to as homeless). Data on demographic detail...