ArticleThe western journal of emergency medicine2021
Who Stayed Home Under Safer-at-Home? Impacts of COVID-19 on Volume and Patient-Mix at an Emergency Department.
Article in The western journal of emergency medicine, 2021. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 4 papers.
What it found
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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.
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Who cites it
4 citing papers in PubMed.
- Emergency Department Utilization and Patient Acuity in the Setting of Care-Seeking Hesitancy: Insights from the COVID-19 Pandemic.The western journal of emergency medicine · 2025Article
- Acute care pathway assessed through performance indicators during the COVID-19 pandemic in OECD countries (2020-2021): a scoping review.BMC emergency medicine · 2024Article
- Interrupted Time Series Analysis: Patient Characteristics and Rates of Opioid-Use-Disorder-Related Emergency Department Visits in the Los Angeles County Public Hospital System during COVID-19.Healthcare (Basel, Switzerland) · 2023Article
- Impact of the COVID pandemic on emergency department CT utilization: where do we go from here?Emergency radiology · 2022Observational
Corrections and comments
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Authors and funding
7 authors.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
introductionTo describe the impact of COVID-19 on a large, urban emergency department (ED) in Los Angeles, California, we sought to estimate the effect of the novel coronavirus 2019 (COVID-19) and "safer-at-home" declaration on ED visits, patient demographics, and diagnosis-mix compared to prior years.
methodsWe used descriptive statistics to compare ED volume and rates of admission for patients presenting to the ED between January and early May of 2018, 2019, and 2020.
resultsImmediately after California's "safer-at-home" declaration, ED utilization dropped by 11,000 visits (37%) compared to the same nine weeks in prior years. The drop affected patients regardless of acuity, demographics, or diagnosis. Reductions were observed in the number of patients reporting symptoms often associated with COVID-19 and all other complaints. After the declaration, higher acuity, older, male, Black, uninsured or non-Medicaid, publicly insured, accounted for a disproportionate share of utilization.
conclusionWe show an abrupt, discontinuous impact of COVID-19 on ED utilization with a slow return as safer-at-home orders have lifted. It is imperative to determine how this reduction will impact patient outcomes, disease control, and the health of the community in the medium and long terms.
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