Connor Houston
High Cost Neighbourhoods: A Perspective on the Health Care Cost of Unintentional Injuries © 2005
This research analyzed the direct health care costs of traumatic unintentional injuries at St. Michael's Hospital from 2001 to 2003 for neighbourhoods in the City of Toronto. Trauma patients included these over the age of 19 years with an Injury Severity Score (lSS) greater than 12, where the injury was not self-inflicted. Geographic Information System (GIS) analysis allowed for the trauma dataset to be spatially aggregated to the corresponding Toronto neighbourhood using the patient's residential location. The various neighbourhood costs were then calculated and it was determined that they showed no geographic correlation. However, using multiple-linear regression models, predictive variables for these costs were determined. Some neighbourhoods in Toronto have higher costs than expected while other neighbourhoods have lower costs than expected. The neighbourhood with the highest costs was Moss Park while the lowest costs were found in Bayview Woods-Steeles.