Researchers ring the alarm on the soaring

In the spring of 2019, I moved to Paris for a study experience abroad and I discovered lime e-scooters. The world’s leading scooter system has existed for a little over a year and has probably inspired the thrust of micromobility solutions – shared and private – that we see today. I loved using them to zoom in on the French capital. My host family, less. And given the amount of money that scooter injuries cost an Irish hospital which is not even in a city, their instinct may be right.

Monday, researchers from the European Emergency Medicine Congress revealed that injuries by e-scooter cost on average Irish hospitals on average 2,024 USD (€ 1,726) per patient. For a particular hospital, the total overall cost in one year increased up to 150,867 USD (€ 128,650). While for American standards that may not seem to be an exorbitant amount of money, the fact is that more people are injured and present themselves in hospitals with complex injuries.

Orthopedic burden

“In 2021, we published the number of patients who came to the emergency department of our suburban hospital following injuries in e-scooters, and recently we published an update which showed that these figures had more than tripled in 2023. Today, I present the results of emergency medicine to emergency medicine as reported by a report by European Society for Emergency Medicine.

In 2023, 76 patients with e-scooter injury arrived at the hospital, mainly with musculoskeletal injuries, which frequently included complex trauma that required major surgery. Suttie and his colleagues have collected information on the cost of their visits, their neighborhood admissions, radiology services, surgery and ambulatory visits.

“These often imposed on our orthopedic colleagues, as these patients needed orthopedic follow-up with or without surgical intervention or admission to the hospital. Thirteen patients needed an orthopedic admission and 34 patients, including those admitted, required ambulatory follow -up, “said Suttie. “The other type of injury was generally head injuries, which did not require medical intervention. There were no deaths in patients with head trauma, and they were not admitted to the intensive care unit. “

However, Suttie told Gizmodo that if the 2023 group used for this financial analysis did not include serious head injuries requiring intensive care, these types of cases are increasingly common. He noted that the use of helmet in scooter cyclists remains limited – but around 8% of patients in a related study carried protective helmets – and that many leading injuries in cost analysis were concussion which could be treated and rejected directly from the emergency department.

Assembly costs

That year, the Connolly Blanchardstown hospital spent 150,867 USD (€ 128,650) for scooter injuries. In addition to the average cost of $ 2,024 (€ 1,726) per patient, the total cost of the emergency services was $ 41,356 (€ 35,264), the total cost of externals was $ 20,382 (€ 17,380) and the total cost of admission to the hospital was $ 8,8660 (€ 75,600). According to researchers, these results can be extrapolated in other Irish hospitals.

However, as “our hospital is suburban, this is not that the majority of driving and injuries on the scooter occurs in Dublin. Hospitals in downtown Dublin would see more and their cost is likely to be considerably higher than in our hospital, “said Suttie.

Intelligent public health policies and updated legislation – such as compulsory headset law and strict application of electronic scooter regulations – could considerably reduce injury, reduce costs for cyclists and facilitate the burden of health systems, he added.

Since Irish public hospitals directly absorb medical costs, these injuries hear an already overloaded health system more. Hospitals in the United States, however, bill patients or insurance companies directly, which means that the rapid increase in the country of scooters by scooter and electric bikes probably involves significant costs for patients and higher bonuses for insurers.

In fact, according to a study published earlier this year on e-scooter injuries in Denver, Colorado, the highest hospital charges for these types of injuries reached nearly $ 23,000. Even the lower end of the spectrum was exorbitant, with a median cost of $ 4,871 for scooter injuries that occurred during the day.