Children's Mercy Kansas City, Kansas City, Missouri.
Children's Hospital Association, Lenexa, Kansas.
J Hosp Med. 2021 Apr;16(4):223-226. doi: 10.12788/jhm.3572.
Children's hospitals responded to COVID-19 by limiting nonurgent healthcare encounters, conserving personal protective equipment, and restructuring care processes to mitigate viral spread. We assessed year-over-year trends in healthcare encounters and hospital charges across US children's hospitals before and during the COVID-19 pandemic. We performed a retrospective analysis, comparing healthcare encounters and inflation-adjusted charges from 26 tertiary children's hospitals reporting to the PROSPECT database from February 1 to June 30 in 2019 (before the COVID-19 pandemic) and 2020 (during the COVID-19 pandemic). All children's hospitals experienced similar trends in healthcare encounters and charges during the study period. Inpatient bed-days, emergency department visits, and surgeries were lower by a median 36%, 65%, and 77%, respectively, per hospital by the week of April 15 (the nadir) in 2020 compared with 2019. Across the study period in 2020, children's hospitals experienced a median decrease of $276 million in charges.
儿童医院通过限制非紧急医疗接触、节约个人防护设备以及重组护理流程来减轻病毒传播，从而应对 COVID-19。我们评估了 COVID-19 大流行前后美国儿童医院的医疗接触和医院收费的逐年趋势。我们进行了一项回顾性分析，比较了从 2019 年 2 月 1 日至 6 月 30 日向 PROSPECT 数据库报告的 26 家三级儿童医院的医疗接触和通货膨胀调整后的收费，这些医院在 COVID-19 大流行之前（2019 年）和期间（2020 年）的数据。在研究期间，所有儿童医院的医疗接触和收费都呈现出类似的趋势。与 2019 年相比，2020 年 4 月 15 日（最低点）当周，每家医院的住院天数、急诊科就诊和手术分别减少了中位数 36%、65%和 77%。在 2020 年的整个研究期间，儿童医院的收费中位数减少了 2.76 亿美元。
