Authors (including presenting author) :
Han JH(1), Sit RWS (2), Choi SYK (1), Wang B(2), Leung MKW (1)
Affiliation :
1. Department of Family Medicine, New Territories East Cluster, Hospital Authority, Hong Kong, China
2. JC School of Public Health and Primary Care, the Chinese University of Hong Kong, Hong Kong SAR, China.
Introduction :
Studies have revealed the pattern of healthcare seeking behavior changed during the COVID-19 pandemic, with a reluctance to visit health care facility. This leads to concerns about the care of non-COVID patients, especially those with long term health conditions. Local data has shown a substantial drop in daily emergency room and specialist out-patient clinics attendance since Jan 2020. To date, there has been less understanding about its impact on primary care service.
Objectives :
To evaluate the impact of COVID-19 pandemic on healthcare seeking behavior in public primary care, as measured by the number of attendance and the disease patterns during first and second waves of COVID-19 surge.
Methodology :
We performed a retrospective analysis on routinely collected data from all NTEC primary care clinics from clinical data analysis reporting system in a period from 1/2/2020-30/6/2020, and compared it to the same period in 2019. Total number of attendance, sex, age and International Classification of Primary Care (ICPC) codes were retrieved.
Result & Outcome :
Comparing with the data in 2019, the data in 2020 showed that the total number of general out-patient clinics (GOPCs) attendance decreased in all age groups, with an overall reduction by 10.3% (347,007 vs 386,759). There was no difference identified between female and male in all age groups in the reduction of number of attendance. A significant reduction in the number of ICPC R (respiratory) coding was recorded (-58.9%, p< 0.001) with a 70.6% drop of the number of cases diagnosed as upper respiratory tract infection (R74). A remarkable increase of P (psychological) coding was observed (17.4%, p< 0.001), with the largest increase occurred in May 2020. Although we observed an overall reduction in numbers of consultations, the number of chronic disease coding, such as K86/87 (uncomplicated and complicated HT) and T90 (non-insulin dependent DM) increased by 0.8% and 2.4%, respectively. An uptake of P coding suggests there is an increasing service demand, implying that clinical service with focus on dealing with COVID-19 related mental health issues should be implemented in primary care. Even though there was an overall modest drop of attendance, the drug refill systems at GOPCs has largely maintained the clinical service of patients with chronic diseases.
