The additional cost in heat-related healthcare will stem from 235,000 visits to the emergency room and more than 56,000 additional hospital admissions across the country each summer, the research, conducted by Virginia Commonwealth University and the Center for American Progress, a liberal think tank, found.
Currently, heat events result in nearly 400 additional ambulatory -- or outpatient -- care visits for heat-related illness, almost 7,000 additional emergency department visits and about 2,000 additional heat-related hospital admissions, mostly for heat-adjacent illness, according to the report. The researchers urged lawmakers at all levels of government, as well as those in the private sector, to confront the climate crisis by severely reducing greenhouse gas emissions, establishing and strengthening federal, state, and local governmental responsibilities for extreme heat protection and improving data surveillance and prediction capabilities.