Variations in Visits to Hospital Emergency Care Facilities: Ritualistic and Meteorological Factors Affecting Supply and Demand

Analysis of Boston Police Department ambulance runs, emergency unit visits to three Boston hospitals located within a six-block radius of one another, and weather conditions during 1968 allows both a micro- and a macroview of the influence of ritualistic and meteorological factors on hospital emergency unit utilization. On a theoretical plane, differences in the temporal distribution of injuries vs. diseases and emergent vs. nonurgent conditions are reduced to variation in levels of risk attributable to meteorological influences and the pursuit by various segments of the population of activities prescribed by occupational and/or social ritual. Empirical findings and their implications have relevance for health care planners and administrators trying to reach decisions about appropriate staffing patterns in hospital emergency care facilities as presently utilized. Assessment of the relative inflexibility of expectations based upon occupational and/or social ritual as it effects supply suggests ways of reorganizing the system for treating the range of nonurgent to urgent conditions arising in the community in the course of the year.