title: Forecasting Hospitalization and Emergency Department Visit Rates for Chronic Obstructive Pulmonary Disease. A Time-Series Analysis.
abstract: BACKGROUND
  Knowing trends in and forecasting hospitalization and emergency department visit rates for chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD) can enable health care providers, hospitals, and health care decision makers to plan for the future.
  
  
  OBJECTIVE
  We conducted a time-series analysis using health care administrative data from the Province of Ontario, Canada, to determine previous trends in acute care hospitalization and emergency department visit rates for COPD and then to forecast future rates.
  
  
  METHODS
  Individuals aged 35 years and older with physician-diagnosed COPD were identified using four universal government health administrative databases and a validated case definition. Monthly COPD hospitalization and emergency department visit rates per 1,000 people with COPD were determined from 2003 to 2014 and then forecasted to 2024 using autoregressive integrated moving average models.
  
  
  RESULTS
  Between 2003 and 2014, COPD prevalence increased from 8.9 to 11.1%. During that time, there were 274,951 hospitalizations and 290,482 emergency department visits for COPD. After accounting for seasonality, we found that monthly COPD hospitalization and emergency department visit rates per 1,000 individuals with COPD remained stable. COPD prevalence was forecasted to increase to 12.7% (95% confidence interval [CI], 11.4-14.1) by 2024, whereas monthly COPD hospitalization and emergency department visit rates per 1,000 people with COPD were forecasted to remain stable at 2.7 (95% CI, 1.6-4.4) and 3.7 (95% CI, 2.3-5.6), respectively. Forecasted age- and sex-stratified rates were also stable.
  
  
  CONCLUSIONS
  COPD hospital and emergency department visit rates per 1,000 people with COPD have been stable for more than a decade and are projected to remain stable in the near future. Given increasing COPD prevalence, this means notably more COPD health service use in the future.
authors.affiliation: 1 Department of Medicine, Sunnybrook Health Sciences Centre.|2 Institute for Clinical Evaluative Sciences.|3 Child Health Evaluative Sciences, The Hospital for Sick Children.|4 Department of Medicine.|5 Dalla Lana School of Public Health.
authors.forename: Andrea
authors.initials: A
authors.lastname: Gershon
authors.affiliation: 2 Institute for Clinical Evaluative Sciences.
authors.forename: Deva
authors.initials: D
authors.lastname: Thiruchelvam
authors.affiliation: 2 Institute for Clinical Evaluative Sciences.|5 Dalla Lana School of Public Health.|6 Department of Family and Community Medicine, University of Toronto, Toronto, Ontario, Canada.
authors.forename: Rahim
authors.initials: R
authors.lastname: Moineddin
authors.affiliation: 3 Child Health Evaluative Sciences, The Hospital for Sick Children.
authors.forename: Xiu Yan
authors.initials: XY
authors.lastname: Zhao
authors.affiliation: 5 Dalla Lana School of Public Health.
authors.forename: Jeremiah
authors.initials: J
authors.lastname: Hwee
authors.affiliation: 2 Institute for Clinical Evaluative Sciences.|3 Child Health Evaluative Sciences, The Hospital for Sick Children.|5 Dalla Lana School of Public Health.
authors.forename: Teresa
authors.initials: T
authors.lastname: To
mesh_terms: D000328:Adult; D017677:Age Distribution; D000368:Aged; D000369:Aged, 80 and over; D017281:Cost of Illness; D016208:Databases, Factual; D004636:Emergency Service, Hospital / Q000639:trends*; D005260:Female; D005544:Forecasting; D006760:Hospitalization / Q000706:statistics & numerical data / Q000639:trends*; D006801:Humans; D008297:Male; D008875:Middle Aged; D009864:Ontario / Q000453:epidemiology; D029424:Pulmonary Disease, Chronic Obstructive / Q000453:epidemiology*; D017678:Sex Distribution
keywords: emergency department visits; hospitalizations; prevalence