Starting later this month, Northwell staff at two Long Island hospitals and a third on Staten Island will add a question to their routine screening of emergency room patients: Do you have a gun in your house?

"Gun violence is a public health issue," Northwell CEO Michael J. Dowling says. "This is the health industry's responsibility to talk about this and do something about it."

The question is part of a new screening program designed to analyze patients' risk for firearm injury.

The program will be funded under a $1.4 million grant from the National Institutes of Health that Northwell received to study gun violence prevention.

As part of the Northwell study, clinicians in the three hospitals' emergency departments will ask patients specific questions about having firearms in their homes and determine their risk of injury. Each response is scored and embedded into the patient’s electronic health record, which will help guide discussions and establish next steps for care.

Updated September 23, 2020

https://www.newsday.com/business/northwell-health-gun-violence-1.49674203