Study: 1 in 10 ER Visits Tied to Heat Waves — SkimNews
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- Harvard and Boston University researchers published a study in Nature Health finding roughly 1 in 10 emergency department visits across 19 states were driven by heat during two severe heat waves last summer, based on analysis of more than 8 million visits across summers 2023–2025.
- Dr. Robert Brewer, associate director of emergency medicine at St. Peter's Hospital in Albany, said heat waves force his ER to staff up due to spikes in dehydration, kidney problems, heart strain, and psychiatric emergencies — and cited an elderly patient who arrived this summer with rhabdomyolysis, a life-threatening muscle-breakdown condition.
- The study launched research just two weeks after the heat waves ended, using aggregated de-identified electronic health records from Truveta — a dramatic compression compared with the years academic heat-event studies typically require.
- Lead author Amruta Nori-Sarma, an assistant professor of environmental health at Harvard, said near-real-time tracking could help hospitals allocate limited bed resources as longer and more intense summers become the norm, with the Northeast newly vulnerable despite lacking historical preparation for severe heat.
- Dr. Abel Kho of Northwestern, while calling the study's broad 19-state geography a strength, flagged that commercial datasets like Truveta offer less transparency and may exclude uninsured and unhoused patients who are especially vulnerable to heat.
- Across the three summers studied, higher temperatures were associated with more ER visits across all causes, but the increase was especially pronounced for psychiatric and kidney-related emergencies — and heat remains the top weather-related killer in the U.S.
Why it matters: The study shifts heat-health epidemiology from years-late to weeks-fast, giving ER directors like Brewer a practical edge: if a heat wave drives roughly a 10% volume spike, hospitals can staff for it in advance. With the Northeast newly exposed and Cook County logging 13 heat deaths this summer — most on historically disenfranchised South and West sides — the operational stakes for hospital resource allocation are immediate and local.
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