Researchers at Boston University Have Reported New Data on Information Technology (Generalizability of Heat-related Health Risk Associations Observed In a Large Healthcare Claims Database of Patients With Commercial Health Insurance): Information Technology

2024 NOV 07 (NewsRx) -- By a News Reporter-Staff News Editor at Insurance Daily News -- Investigators discuss new findings in Information Technology. According to news reporting out of Boston, Massachusetts, by NewsRx editors, research stated, “Extreme ambient heat is unambiguously associated with a higher risk of illness and death. The Optum Labs Data Warehouse (OLDW), a database of medical claims from US-based patients with commercial or Medicare Advantage health insurance, has been used to quantify heat-related health impacts.”

Financial supporters for this research include BU URBAN program via the National Science Foundation, United States Department of Energy (DOE), NIH National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences (NIEHS), Wellcome Trust, United States Department of Energy (DOE).

Our news journalists obtained a quote from the research from Boston University, “Whether results for the insured subpopulation are generalizable to the broader population has, to our knowledge, not been documented. We sought to address this question, for the US population in California from 2012 to 2019. We examined changes in daily rates of emergency department encounters and in-patient hospitalization encounters for all-causes, heat-related outcomes, renal disease, mental/behavioral disorders, cardiovascular disease, and respiratory disease. OLDW was the source of health data for insured individuals in California, and health data for the broader population were gathered from the California Department of Health Care Access and Information. We defined extreme heat exposure as any day in a group of 2 or more days with maximum temperatures exceeding the county-specific 97.5th percentile and used a space-time-stratified case-crossover design to assess and compare the impacts of heat on health. Average incidence rates of medical encounters differed by dataset. However, rate ratios for emergency department encounters were similar across datasets for all causes [ratio of incidence rate ratios (rIRR) = 0.989; 95% confidence interval (CI) = 0.969, 1.009], heat-related causes (rIRR = 1.080; 95% CI = 0.999, 1.168), renal disease (rIRR = 0.963; 95% CI = 0.718, 1.292), and mental health disorders (rIRR = 1.098; 95% CI = 1.004, 1.201). Rate ratios for inpatient encounters were also similar.”

According to the news editors, the research concluded: “This work presents evidence that OLDW can continue to be a resource for estimating the health impacts of extreme heat.”

This research has been peer-reviewed.

For more information on this research see: Generalizability of Heat-related Health Risk Associations Observed In a Large Healthcare Claims Database of Patients With Commercial Health Insurance. Epidemiology, 2024;35(6):844-852. Epidemiology can be contacted at: Lippincott Williams & Wilkins, Two Commerce Sq, 2001 Market St, Philadelphia, PA 19103, USA. (Lippincott Williams and Wilkins - www.lww.com; Epidemiology - http://journals.lww.com/epidem/pages/default.aspx)

Our news journalists report that additional information may be obtained by contacting Chad W. Milando, Boston University, Dept. of Environmental Health, 715 Albany St, Boston, MA 02118, United States. Additional authors for this research include Yuantong Sun, Amruta Nori-Sarma, Emma L. Gause, Keith R. Spangler, Gregory A. Wellenius, Yasmin Romitti and Ian Sue Wing.

The direct object identifier (DOI) for that additional information is: https://doi.org/10.1097/EDE.0000000000001781. This DOI is a link to an online electronic document that is either free or for purchase, and can be your direct source for a journal article and its citation.

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