How important are delays in treatment for health outcomes? The case of ambulance response time and cardiovascular events
利用降雨对救护车响应时间的冲击，识别出响应时间每增加一分钟导致意大利某地区每年多死105人，并量化了缩短响应时间的经济价值，为政策制定提供依据。
The cost effectiveness of medical treatments is not precisely known due to the compounding effect of multiple determining factors. Ambulance response time (RT) to emergency calls is exploited to learn more about the effect of the timing of treatment on health outcomes. This causal relation is identified by exploiting rainfall at the time of the ambulance run as a shock to RT. The analysis focuses on patients who have undergone a cardiac event and shows that a one-minute increase in average RT leads to 105 more deaths each year in one Italian region. Finally, the economic value of the lives that would be saved by reducing RT is quantified to facilitate policymaking.