Improving Understanding of Screening Questions for Social Risk and Social Need Among Emergency Department Patients

Introduction:With recent healthcare policy changes, including the creation of accountable care organizations, screening for social risks such as food and housing insecurity has become increasingly common in the healthcare system. However, the wide variety of different tools used for screening makes it challenging to compare across systems. In addition, the majority of tools used to measure social risks have only been tested in primary care settings and may not be optimal for emergency department (ED) use. Therefore, the goal of this study was to create a brief social screening tool for use in EDs.Methods: We developed an initial tool using publicly available questions corresponding to the five core categories of the Centers for Medicare& Medicaid Services ’ Accountable Health Communities Screening Tool. Iterative cycles of cognitive interviews with purposively sampled participants were performed using a hybrid model of think-aloud...
Source: Western Journal of Emergency Medicine - Category: Emergency Medicine Source Type: research