The impact of temperature disparity on emergency readmissions and patient flows

Abstract

According to the World Health Organisation (WHO), global estimates there are approximately 210 million people suffering from chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD). It is assumed that climate change could have an adverse effect on COPD patient readmission. Given that the impact of climate change on health has seen a tremendous amount of public and media attention with limited quantitative understanding, this paper develops a frailty model to examine the effect of temperature variation on COPD readmission. Using the national Hospital Episodes Statistics dataset linked with the temperature data provided by the Met Office. The exploratory analysis and the multivariate frailty model revealed some interesting relationship with temperature. The outcome of the results might be helpful to understand and show the evidence of the impacts of the long-term temperature disparity on the hazard rate of COPD readmissions and measure the spatial significances.