The odds and costs of ambulance attendances associated with heatwave severity in older adults of queensland, Australia
Xu, Zhiwei, Rutherford, Shannon, Nghiem, Son, Mason, Hannah M., Varghese, Blesson Mathew, King, Jemma C., Peden, Amy E., Watt, Kerrianne, Bosley, Emma, and Franklin, Richard C. (2025) The odds and costs of ambulance attendances associated with heatwave severity in older adults of queensland, Australia. International Journal of Biometeorology, 69. pp. 2661-2668.
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Abstract
Ambulance attendances have been increasingly reported to be a sensitive indicator of increased health service utilisations during heatwaves. This study estimated the odds and costs of ambulance attendances associated with heatwave severity (low-intensity, severe, and extreme) in older adults (≥ 65 years) from 1st January 2010 to 31st December 2018 in the State of Queensland, Australia. The findings showed that low-intensity, severe, and extreme heatwaves were associated with 1.4% (95% confidence interval: 0.3%, 2.5%), 4.1% (2.1%, 6.1%), and 9.7% (7.3%, 12.0%) increased odds of ambulance attendances for older adults, respectively. The increased odds of ambulance attendances elevated with age during extreme heatwaves (peaking at 11.7% for ≥ 85 years). Heatwaves were associated with additional ambulance attendance costs of $237,141 per year for older adults in Queensland, with 62.2% and 31.7% of these costs from low-intensity and severe heatwaves, respectively. These findings call for research to address critical knowledge gaps around appropriate early warning system notifications for low-intensity and severe heatwaves, given their evidenced impacts on individuals and emergency health systems.
| Item ID: | 88705 |
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| Item Type: | Article (Research - C1) |
| ISSN: | 1432-1254 |
| Keywords: | Ambulance, Elderly, Health costs, Heat early warning system, Heatwaves |
| Copyright Information: | © The Author(s) 2025. This article is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License, which permits use, sharing, adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons licence, and indicate if changes were made. The images or other third party material in this article are included in the article’s Creative Commons licence, unless indicated otherwise in a credit line to the material. If material is not included in the article’s Creative Commons licence and your intended use is not permitted by statutory regulation or exceeds the permitted use, you will need to obtain permission directly from the copyright holder. To view a copy of this licence, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/. |
| Date Deposited: | 23 Jun 2026 02:00 |
| FoR Codes: | 42 HEALTH SCIENCES > 4203 Health services and systems > 420308 Health informatics and information systems @ 100% |
| SEO Codes: | 20 HEALTH > 2002 Evaluation of health and support services > 200206 Health system performance (incl. effectiveness of programs) @ 100% |
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