TY - JOUR
T1 - Changes in Health Care Access during the COVID-19 Pandemic
T2 - Estimates of National Japanese Data, June 2020–October 2021
AU - Tanoue, Yuta
AU - Ghaznavi, Cyrus
AU - Kawashima, Takayuki
AU - Eguchi, Akifumi
AU - Yoneoka, Daisuke
AU - Nomura, Shuhei
N1 - Funding Information:
This research was partially supported by research grants from the Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology of Japan (21H03203) and the Ministry of Health, Labour and Welfare, Japan (20HA2007).
Publisher Copyright:
© 2022 by the authors.
PY - 2022/7
Y1 - 2022/7
N2 - The COVID-19 pandemic has disrupted health care access around the world, both for inpatients and outpatients. We applied a quasi-Poisson regression to national, monthly data on the number of outpatients, number of inpatients, length of average hospital stay, and the number of new hospitalizations from March 2015 to October 2021 to assess how these outcomes changed between June 2020 to October 2021. The number of outpatient visits were lower-than-predicted during the early phases of the pandemic but normalized by the fall of 2021. The number of inpatients and new hospitalizations were lower-than-predicted throughout the pandemic, and deficits in reporting continued to be observed in late 2021. The length of hospital stays was within the predicted range for all beds, but when stratified by bed type, was higher than predicted for psychiatric beds, lower-than-predicted for tuberculosis beds, and showed variable changes in long-term care insurance beds. Health care access in Japan was impacted by the COVID-19 pandemic.
AB - The COVID-19 pandemic has disrupted health care access around the world, both for inpatients and outpatients. We applied a quasi-Poisson regression to national, monthly data on the number of outpatients, number of inpatients, length of average hospital stay, and the number of new hospitalizations from March 2015 to October 2021 to assess how these outcomes changed between June 2020 to October 2021. The number of outpatient visits were lower-than-predicted during the early phases of the pandemic but normalized by the fall of 2021. The number of inpatients and new hospitalizations were lower-than-predicted throughout the pandemic, and deficits in reporting continued to be observed in late 2021. The length of hospital stays was within the predicted range for all beds, but when stratified by bed type, was higher than predicted for psychiatric beds, lower-than-predicted for tuberculosis beds, and showed variable changes in long-term care insurance beds. Health care access in Japan was impacted by the COVID-19 pandemic.
KW - COVID-19
KW - Japan
KW - health care access
KW - healthcare capacity
KW - hospital beds
KW - hospital stay
KW - outpatient visit
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U2 - 10.3390/ijerph19148810
DO - 10.3390/ijerph19148810
M3 - Article
C2 - 35886661
AN - SCOPUS:85135105763
SN - 1661-7827
VL - 19
JO - International journal of environmental research and public health
JF - International journal of environmental research and public health
IS - 14
M1 - 8810
ER -