FIGURE 1.

Timing of homeless shelter entry within one year of baseline emergency department visit

96 of 1,929 patients (5.0%) entered a homeless shelter within 12 months of the baseline ED visit, excluding patients who were homeless at baseline (using a conservative definition of self-report of spending the last night on the streets or in a shelter or any documented shelter stay in the past 7 days). We conservatively excluded n=5 patients who had a shelter entry the same day as the baseline ED visit (and who had not self-reported spending the last night on the streets or in a shelter), since it was unknown if the shelter entry occurred before or after the ED visit. If we instead assumed all 5 entered shelter after their ED visit, the shelter entry incidence would be 101/1,934 = 5.2%.

Survival is the inverse of hazard and shows the number of patients each month (30-day time period [35 days between months 11 and 12 to total to 365 days]) that had not yet entered shelter. Subtracting survival number for each month from 1,929 equals the number who had entered shelter by that month following the ED visit.