IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/nbr/nberwo/27505.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

Natural Disasters and Elective Medical Services: How Big is the Bounce-Back?

Author

Listed:
  • Tatyana Deryugina
  • Jonathan Gruber
  • Adrienne Sabety

Abstract

COVID-19 has created a dual set of stresses on health care systems worldwide: a rise in expensive intensive care services and a dramatic decline in elective services. The U.S. government has responded with both grant and loan programs to help health care providers weather the storm. But the optimal size and nature of such programs are hard to evaluate without an understanding of the ability of providers to make up their lost elective service revenues over time. In this paper, we study the closest relevant parallel to the reduction in elective services seen under COVID-19: hurricanes. We match information on hurricanes to data on Medicare hospital elective visits and charges from 1997-2013, comparing counties impacted by hurricanes to nearby unaffected counties. We find that the average hurricane reduces elective services by about 7% in the month it makes landfall. For the most severe hurricanes, we estimate a reduction of more than 20%. Services return to baseline fairly rapidly, but for severe hurricanes it takes a year or more to make up lost revenues. Projections based on variation in hurricane severity suggest that it will take over 3 years for providers to make up the lost revenue from COVID-19.

Suggested Citation

  • Tatyana Deryugina & Jonathan Gruber & Adrienne Sabety, 2020. "Natural Disasters and Elective Medical Services: How Big is the Bounce-Back?," NBER Working Papers 27505, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    • Handle: RePEc:nbr:nberwo:27505
    Note: AG EEE EH PE
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://www.nber.org/papers/w27505.pdf
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Tatyana Deryugina & Laura Kawano & Steven Levitt, 2018. "The Economic Impact of Hurricane Katrina on Its Victims: Evidence from Individual Tax Returns," American Economic Journal: Applied Economics, American Economic Association, vol. 10(2), pages 202-233, April.
    2. Tatyana Deryugina, 2017. "The Fiscal Cost of Hurricanes: Disaster Aid versus Social Insurance," American Economic Journal: Economic Policy, American Economic Association, vol. 9(3), pages 168-198, August.
    3. Mr. Michael Keen & Mr. Paul K. Freeman & Mr. Muthukumara Mani, 2003. "Dealing with Increased Risk of Natural Disasters: Challenges and Options," IMF Working Papers 2003/197, International Monetary Fund.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    RePEc Biblio mentions

    As found on the RePEc Biblio, the curated bibliography for Economics:
    1. > Economics of Welfare > Health Economics > Economics of Pandemics > Specific pandemics > Covid-19 > Economic policy > Business support

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Engy Ziedan & Kosali I. Simon & Coady Wing, 2022. "Mortality Effects of Healthcare Supply Shocks: Evidence Using Linked Deaths and Electronic Health Records," NBER Working Papers 30553, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Krzysztof Karbownik & Anthony Wray, 2019. "Long-Run Consequences of Exposure to Natural Disasters," Journal of Labor Economics, University of Chicago Press, vol. 37(3), pages 949-1007.
    2. Qin Fan & Meri Davlasheridze, 2019. "Economic Impacts Of Migration And Brain Drain After Major Catastrophe: The Case Of Hurricane Katrina," Climate Change Economics (CCE), World Scientific Publishing Co. Pte. Ltd., vol. 10(01), pages 1-21, February.
    3. Graff Zivin, Joshua & Liao, Yanjun & Panassié, Yann, 2023. "How hurricanes sweep up housing markets: Evidence from Florida," Journal of Environmental Economics and Management, Elsevier, vol. 118(C).
    4. Andrew B. Martinez, 2020. "Forecast Accuracy Matters for Hurricane Damage," Econometrics, MDPI, vol. 8(2), pages 1-24, May.
    5. Coronese, Matteo & Crippa, Federico & Lamperti, Francesco & Chiaromonte, Francesca & Roventini, Andrea, 2025. "Raided by the storm: How three decades of thunderstorms shaped U.S. incomes and wages," Journal of Environmental Economics and Management, Elsevier, vol. 130(C).
    6. Michael Berlemann & Max Steinhardt & Jascha Tutt, 2015. "Do Natural Disasters Stimulate Individual Saving? Evidence from a Natural Experiment in a Highly Developed Country," SOEPpapers on Multidisciplinary Panel Data Research 763, DIW Berlin, The German Socio-Economic Panel (SOEP).
    7. Rahman, Muhammad Habibur & Anbarci, Nejat & Ulubaşoğlu, Mehmet A., 2022. "“Storm autocracies”: Islands as natural experiments," Journal of Development Economics, Elsevier, vol. 159(C).
    8. Josiah Hickson & Joseph Marshan, 2022. "Labour Market Effects of Bushfires and Floods in Australia: A Gendered Perspective," The Economic Record, The Economic Society of Australia, vol. 98(S1), pages 1-23, September.
    9. Stephan Schneider & Sven Kunze, 2021. "Disastrous Discretion: Ambiguous Decision Situations Foster Political Favoritism," KOF Working papers 21-491, KOF Swiss Economic Institute, ETH Zurich.
    10. De Juan Fernández, Aránzazu & Poncela, Pilar & Rodríguez Caballero, Carlos Vladimir, 2022. "Economic activity and climate change," DES - Working Papers. Statistics and Econometrics. WS 35044, Universidad Carlos III de Madrid. Departamento de Estadística.
    11. repec:ags:aaea22:335942 is not listed on IDEAS
    12. Jerch, Rhiannon & Kahn, Matthew E. & Lin, Gary C., 2023. "Local public finance dynamics and hurricane shocks," Journal of Urban Economics, Elsevier, vol. 134(C).
    13. Daniel Aaronson & Scott A. Brave & R. Andrew Butters & Daniel Sacks & Boyoung Seo, 2020. "Using the Eye of the Storm to Predict the Wave of Covid-19 UI Claims," Working Paper Series WP-2020-10, Federal Reserve Bank of Chicago, revised 16 Apr 2020.
    14. Richard Hornbeck, 2020. "Dust Bowl Migrants: Identifying an Archetype," NBER Working Papers 27656, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    15. Nguyen, Ha Trong & Mitrou, Francis, 2025. "Natural disasters and the demand for health insurance," Journal of Environmental Economics and Management, Elsevier, vol. 130(C).
    16. Tatyana Deryugina, 2017. "The Fiscal Cost of Hurricanes: Disaster Aid versus Social Insurance," American Economic Journal: Economic Policy, American Economic Association, vol. 9(3), pages 168-198, August.
    17. Qing Miao & Michael Abrigo & Yilin Hou & Yanjun (Penny) Liao, 2023. "Extreme Weather Events and Local Fiscal Responses: Evidence from U.S. Counties," Economics of Disasters and Climate Change, Springer, vol. 7(1), pages 93-115, March.
    18. Timothy K. M. Beatty & Jay P. Shimshack & Richard J. Volpe, 2019. "Disaster Preparedness and Disaster Response: Evidence from Sales of Emergency Supplies Before and After Hurricanes," Journal of the Association of Environmental and Resource Economists, University of Chicago Press, vol. 6(4), pages 633-668.
    19. Jacob Kim-Sherman & Lee Seltzer, 2024. "Clustering in Natural Disaster Damages," Staff Reports 1135, Federal Reserve Bank of New York.
    20. Johar, Meliyanni & Johnston, David W. & Shields, Michael A. & Siminski, Peter & Stavrunova, Olena, 2022. "The economic impacts of direct natural disaster exposure," Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Elsevier, vol. 196(C), pages 26-39.
    21. Jere Lehtomaa & Clément Renoir, 2023. "The Economic Impact of Tropical Cyclones: Case Studies in General Equilibrium," CER-ETH Economics working paper series 23/382, CER-ETH - Center of Economic Research (CER-ETH) at ETH Zurich.

    More about this item

    JEL classification:

    • H12 - Public Economics - - Structure and Scope of Government - - - Crisis Management
    • I11 - Health, Education, and Welfare - - Health - - - Analysis of Health Care Markets
    • Q54 - Agricultural and Natural Resource Economics; Environmental and Ecological Economics - - Environmental Economics - - - Climate; Natural Disasters and their Management; Global Warming

    NEP fields

    This paper has been announced in the following NEP Reports:

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:nbr:nberwo:27505. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: the person in charge (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/nberrus.html .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.