Extreme weather increases emergency room visits

Extreme weather events are increasing with climate change. This has many repercussions, and a new study by Salas and colleagues (2024) shows that emergency room visits and mortality increase in the aftermath.

The researchers studied 42 billion dollar extreme weather events in the US between 2011 and 2016. They compared data between hospitals in affected counties with equivalent hospitals in unaffected counties. They looked at three time periods, 1 week, 1-2 weeks, and 3-6 weeks post disaster.

Their findings show that while non-elective hospitalizations stayed the same, emergency department visits increased for the first two weeks after the disaster event. Mortality actually increased all the way through week 6. And the increases were higher when the disasters were worse.

This is an important topic as we look at the impacts of climate change. We often think about things like infrastructure damage which result in high financial costs of extreme weather, but this research shows that there are also significant health care costs as well. The health costs include both financial and social costs.

It also makes me think that we might be underestimating the human costs of extreme weather. There are often reports regarding loss of life immediately after the event but this research shows that ignores subsequent health impacts and deaths in the following weeks.

I’d like to see this research expanded to more places, but it raises an important reason to take action on climate change now.