Emergency room visits and deaths can be heightened for weeks after a major extreme weather event, according to a new study from researchers at two Massachusetts hospitals that highlights gaps in federal tracking for billion-dollar disasters.
The study, published Thursday in Nature Medicine, looked at weather events between 2011 and 2016 that caused more than $1 billion in damages and compared them with data from Medicare. They found that one week after major weather events, emergency department visits and mortality remained elevated by more than 1 percent from pre-disaster levels, and deaths remained elevated for as much as six weeks after the event.
Nature Medicine
“These findings suggest that the biggest weather disasters have broad and long-lasting impacts on health emergencies and deaths among those who have Medicare,” said lead author Renee Salas, an emergency room physician at Massachusetts General Hospital.
Salas and her co-authors see their study as a jumping-off point for further research — particularly to help fill gaps in the ways the federal government quantifies the toll of disaster.
