Effects of 2018 Japan floods on healthcare costs and service utilization in Japan: a retrospective cohort study

Floods and torrential rains are natural disasters caused by climate change. Unfortunately, such events are more frequent and are increasingly severe in recent times. The 2018 Japan Floods in western Japan were one of the largest such disasters. This study aimed to evaluate the effect of the 2018 Jap...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:BMC public health 2023-02, Vol.23 (1), p.288-288, Article 288
Main Authors: Yoshida, Shuhei, Kashima, Saori, Okazaki, Yuji, Matsumoto, Masatoshi
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Climate change
Cohort analysis
Delivery of Health Care
Dispensing
Emergency preparedness
Environmental aspects
Fatalities
Floods
Health aspects
Health care
Health Care Costs
Health insurance
Health services
Healthcare cost
Healthcare service utilization
Humans
Insurance coverage
Japan
Medical care
Medical care, Cost of
Natural disaster
Natural disasters
Patients
Public health
Retrospective Studies
Risk
Utilization
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Summary:Floods and torrential rains are natural disasters caused by climate change. Unfortunately, such events are more frequent and are increasingly severe in recent times. The 2018 Japan Floods in western Japan were one of the largest such disasters. This study aimed to evaluate the effect of the 2018 Japan Floods on healthcare costs and service utilization. This retrospective cohort study included all patients whose receipts accrued between July 2017 and June 2019 in Hiroshima, Okayama, and Ehime prefectures using the National Database of Health Insurance Claims. We used Generalized Estimating Equations (GEEs) to investigate yearly healthcare costs during the pre-and post-disaster periods, quarterly high-cost patients (top 10%), and service utilization (outpatient care, inpatient care, and dispensing pharmacy) during the post-disaster period. After the GEEs, we estimated the average marginal effects as the attributable disaster effect. The total number of participants was 5,534,276. Victims accounted for 0.65% of the total number of participants (n = 36,032). Although there was no significant difference in pre-disaster healthcare costs (p = 0.63), post-disaster costs were $3,382 (95% CI: 3,254-3,510) for victims and $3,027 (95% CI: 3,015-3,038) for non-victims (p 
ISSN:1471-2458
1471-2458
DOI:10.1186/s12889-023-15205-w