Evidence map›Paper›PMID 38974390›Full record

ArticleRisk management and healthcare policy2024

Impacts of Major Changes in China's COVID-19 Prevention and Control Policies on Emergency Department Visits: A Quasi-Experiment.

Yang Zhang, Chenggen Xiao, Guoqing Huang, Minxue Shen

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Article in Risk management and healthcare policy, 2024. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Not yet cited in PubMed.

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1 · What the graph read from it

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4 · The record

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5 · Who and what money

Authors and funding

4 authors.

Yang Zhang *Department of Social Medicine and Health Management, Xiangya School of Public Health, Central South University, Changsha City, Hunan Province, People's Republic of China.
Chenggen Xiao *Department of Emergency, Xiangya Hospital, Central South University, Changsha City, Hunan Province, People's Republic of China.
Guoqing HuangDepartment of Emergency, Xiangya Hospital, Central South University, Changsha City, Hunan Province, People's Republic of China.
Minxue ShenDepartment of Social Medicine and Health Management, Xiangya School of Public Health, Central South University, Changsha City, Hunan Province, People's Republic of China.ORCID 0000-0003-0441-9303

Funding

No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.

6 · The paper itself

Abstract

Objective: This study aims to evaluate the impact of COVID-19 prevention and control policies on the frequency of emergency department (ED) visits in a large tertiary hospital in central China, from January 2018 to September 2023. Methods: We conducted a multi-stage interrupted time series analysis to investigate the impact of various epidemic control policies on weekly ED visits at a tertiary hospital in Hunan Province, China. The study period ranged from January 1, 2018, to September 30, 2023, and was divided into four distinct periods: pre-epidemic, pandemic, normalized control, and end of control. Using a quasi-Poisson regression model, we examined the specific effects of these policies on emergency visits, with a particular focus on stratifying patients based on respiratory versus non-respiratory diseases. Results: Compared to the pre-pandemic period, the number of ED visits in a tertiary hospital decreased by 38.5% (95% CI: 25.1% to 49.8%) during the COVID-19 pandemic, of which the number of ED visits for respiratory diseases increased by 79.4% (95% CI: 13.2% to 177.2%) and the number of ED visits for non-respiratory diseases decreased by 45.9% (95% CI: -55.7% to -34.2%). After the end of the epidemic control, the total number of ED visits increased by 31.5% (95% CI: 19.1% to 45.0%), with the number of ED visits for respiratory diseases rising by 379.2% (95% CI: 275.9% to 511.8%), but with no significant change in the number of ED visits for non-respiratory emergencies. Conclusion: Control policies were associated with people avoiding emergency care for non-respiratory related reasons during the pandemic, while the end of control policies was associated with a sharp rise in emergency care for respiratory diseases. This study provides a scientific basis for the different changes in ED visits under the implementation of varying epidemic prevention and control policies.

Indexed as

COVID-19emergency visithealth policyinterrupted time series analysisrespiratory disease

Identifiers

PMID38974390
PMCPMC11227878

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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.