Increase in avoidable hospital admissions after the Great East Japan Earthquake

Abstract

Preventable and chronic ACSCs may have increased just after the earthquake and then immediately decreased. However, avoidable admissions due to acute ACSCs remained high in the long term after the earthquake and tsunami disaster.

Admissions for ambulatory care sensitive conditions on rural islands and their association with patient experience: a multicentred prospective cohort study

“…Third, although we used the UK’s definition of ACSCs, this concept is influenced by healthcare systems in each country. Further research is needed to examine the validity of the definition of ACSCs in the Japanese primary care setting 34. Fourth, though data related to the reasons for referral and the severity of illnesses are essential for assessing the association between admissions for ACSCs and PX, we could not gather this information.…”

“…The study’s primary outcome was documenting the number of patients who were admitted to hospitals for ACSCs at least once during 1 year. We used the National Health Service (NHS) outcome framework to define ACSCs,33 because there is no definition of ACSCs for Japanese clinical settings, and a previous study of ACSCs in Japan also used this framework 34. This framework is based on the International Classification of Diseases, Tenth Revision for 11 chronic conditions such as diabetes and asthma, and 10 acute conditions such as influenza and pneumonia 33.…”

Disaster Medicine: A Comprehensive Review of the Literature From 2016

“…Van Berlaer et al 17 nicely summarized initial diagnoses by the Belgian First Aid and Support Team in the immediate aftermath of the Haiti earthquake and follow-up diagnoses from the Médecins Sans Frontières (Doctors Without Borders) clinics operating in the same location during the same time of the year in 2009, 2011, and 2012, in order to compare short-term outcomes. Sasabuchi et al 18 reviewed the Great Eastern Japan earthquake's impact on hospital admissions and investigated possible utilization reduction strategies in the wake of such a disaster. Both incorporated novel retrospective analysis: 1 merged 2 electronic medical record databases for follow-up, whereas Sasabuchi et al 18 used a national data registry as the data source for their investigations.…”

“…Sasabuchi et al 18 reviewed the Great Eastern Japan earthquake's impact on hospital admissions and investigated possible utilization reduction strategies in the wake of such a disaster. Both incorporated novel retrospective analysis: 1 merged 2 electronic medical record databases for follow-up, whereas Sasabuchi et al 18 used a national data registry as the data source for their investigations. A comparative analysis was conducted by Nomura et al 19 to aid in evacuation decision-making between elderly evacuees and non-evacuees after the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear disaster, which was a result of the Great Eastern Japan earthquake in 2011.…”

Lingering Impact of Starting Working Life During a Recession: Health Outcomes of Survivors of the “Employment Ice Age” (1993–2004) in Japan

“…This type of regression model specification has been often used in DiD analysis, including in recent studies in Japan. 30,31 To adjust for the potential bias due to the difference in age contributions between the pre-EIA (wave 1-5) and post-EIA (wave 11) periods, we weighted the data of each age in wave 11 with the ratio of the share of respondents of that age in wave 1-5 to the share of respondents of the same age in wave 11 in the DiD regression models.…”