ArticleFrontiers in public health2020
Reduced Rate of Inpatient Hospital Admissions in 18 German University Hospitals During the COVID-19 Lockdown.
Article in Frontiers in public health, 2020. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 70 papers, 1 of them a synthesis that pooled it.
What it found
Each row is one number read from the abstract, on the scale the paper reported it, with its interval. Left of the dashed line favours the treatment, right favours the comparator. Under each row is the sentence it came from. New to these charts? A ten-minute tutorial.
The abstract states no effect estimate the extractor could read, or names no intervention and outcome on the map, so this paper lights no cell and moves no belief. It is still indexed, cited and linked below.
The trial behind it
Trials whose registry record cites this paper, or whose number appears in the abstract. A trial that started after this paper was published is citing it as background, not reporting it.
Neither the registry nor the abstract names a trial number. If this is a trial report, that itself is worth knowing.
Who cites it
70 citing papers in PubMed, 1 synthesis or guideline pooled it, 118 citations in OpenAlex.
- Pooled it
- Trial
- Early Video-assisted Thoracoscopic Surgery or Intrapleural Enzyme Therapy in Pleural Infection: A Feasibility Randomized Controlled Trial. The Third Multicenter Intrapleural Sepsis Trial-MIST-3.American journal of respiratory and critical care medicine · 2023Trial
- An Investigation of the Factors Reducing the Use of Hospital Services: A Systematic Review.Health science reports · 2026Review
- Impact of a high-profile sudden cardiac death on emergency department utilization: a multi-campus interrupted time series and exploratory phenotyping study.BMC emergency medicine · 2026Article
- Patterns of Spontaneous Adverse Drug Reaction Reporting in Germany From 2012 to 2021.Pharmacology research & perspectives · 2026Article
- Article
- Nationwide trends in inpatient shoulder girdle injuries in Germany: a population-based analysis from 2010 to 2023.Injury epidemiology · 2026Article
- Sharing EHR data of patients with rare diseases for research - The role of quality assessments in a national federated research data infrastructure.BMC medical informatics and decision making · 2026Article
- Epidemiology of hospitalization and surgical therapy in degenerative cervical myelopathy: A Nationwide discharge-based twenty year analysis.International orthopaedics · 2026Article
- Malaria: 11-Year Experience With Imported Cases at a German University Hospital and Epidemiological Trends Amid the COVID-19 Pandemic.Journal of parasitology research · 2026Article
- The COVID-19 Pandemic and Acute Coronary Syndrome Admissions and Deaths in Allegheny County, Pennsylvania.Healthcare (Basel, Switzerland) · 2025Article
- Drivers and recent trends of hospitalisation costs related to acute pulmonary embolism.Clinical research in cardiology : official journal of the German Cardiac Society · 2025Article
- The impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on governmental hospitals performance indicators in city of Yazd, Iran: an interrupted time-series analysis.BMC health services research · 2025Article
- Kinetic Patterns of Antibiotic Consumption in German Acute Care Hospitals from 2017 to 2023.Antibiotics (Basel, Switzerland) · 2025Article
- Article
- Continuity of care in a pandemic: an observational study in GP-centred healthcare in Germany.BMJ open quality · 2025Observational
- Impact of the COVID-19 Pandemic on the Treatment of Head and Neck Cancers.Journal of clinical medicine · 2025Article
- Impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on patients with coronary artery disease requiring cardiac surgery at a German university hospital.Journal of cardiothoracic surgery · 2025Article
- Challenges and adaptations in pancreatic cancer surgery during the COVID-19 pandemic in a high-volume center.BMC cancer · 2025Article
10 more citing papers are in PubMed but not listed here.
Corrections and comments
PubMed lists nothing against this paper. Absence here is not a guarantee, only a check that was made.
Authors and funding
30 authors at 11 institutions in 1 country.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
The COVID-19 pandemic has caused strains on health systems worldwide disrupting routine hospital services for all non-COVID patients. Within this retrospective study, we analyzed inpatient hospital admissions across 18 German university hospitals during the 2020 lockdown period compared to 2018. Patients admitted to hospital between January 1 and May 31, 2020 and the corresponding periods in 2018 and 2019 were included in this study. Data derived from electronic health records were collected and analyzed using the data integration center infrastructure implemented in the university hospitals that are part of the four consortia funded by the German Medical Informatics Initiative. Admissions were grouped and counted by ICD 10 chapters and specific reasons for treatment at each site. Pooled aggregated data were centrally analyzed with descriptive statistics to compare absolute and relative differences between time periods of different years. The results illustrate how care process adoptions depended on the COVID-19 epidemiological situation and the criticality of the disease. Overall inpatient hospital admissions decreased by 35% in weeks 1 to 4 and by 30.3% in weeks 5 to 8 after the lockdown announcement compared to 2018. Even hospital admissions for critical care conditions such as malignant cancer treatments were reduced. We also noted a high reduction of emergency admissions such as myocardial infarction (38.7%), whereas the reduction in stroke admissions was smaller (19.6%). In contrast, we observed a considerable reduction in admissions for non-critical clinical situations, such as hysterectomies for benign tumors (78.8%) and hip replacements due to arthrosis (82.4%). In summary, our study shows that the university hospital admission rates in Germany were substantially reduced following the national COVID-19 lockdown. These included critical care or emergency conditions in which deferral is expected to impair clinical outcomes. Future studies are needed to delineate how appropriate medical care of critically ill patients can be maintained during a pandemic.
Indexed as
Identifiers
What OpenQuestion holds
Registered trials
Read under generation 80e0d062 · epoch 390. Bibliography from PubMed, PubMed Central and OpenAlex; grants from NIH RePORTER; trial links from ClinicalTrials.gov; estimates, votes and beliefs from the OpenQuestion graph.