Obesity and the Emergency Short Stay Unit

Direct healthcare cost of obesity in developed countries have been estimated at 2-7% of total healthcare costs and $830 million annually for treating obesity and its consequences in Australia (Kam and Taylor, 2010). Obesity has been directly related to increased resource consumptions (Raebel et al., 2004) (Chen et al., 2007b) (Reidpath et al., 2002), while associations between health service consumption and obesity have also been reported (Popoola, 2004) (Bertakis and Azari, 2005). In particular, increased resource utilisation has been associated with higher admission rates and longer length-of-stay associated with obesity (Kam and Taylor, 2010).
Source: International Emergency Nursing - Category: Nursing Authors: Source Type: research