Health Insurance Research Institute, National Health Insurance Service, Wonju, 26464, South Korea.
BMC Geriatr. 2022 May 6;22(1):395. doi: 10.1186/s12877-022-03085-5.
At the onset of the coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic, health care systems were severely disrupted in many countries and in particular, elderly people vulnerable to COVID-19 may have been reluctant to receive their medical treatment.
We conducted interrupted time series analyses (ITSA) using nationwide medical claim data between January 2020 and July 2020, with focus on different disease categories for the patients of 65 to 84-year-olds, i.e., acute upper respiratory infections (AURIs) vs. chronic diseases.
AURIs and chronic diseases showed a sharp contrast with respect to the change in healthcare service utilisation. First, the utilisation rate for chronic diseases changed little whereas for AURIs it dropped by 20.4% year-over-year (yoy) at the onset of the pandemic (week 6, 2020). Second, as social distancing relaxed (week 17, 2020), the AURIs patients trended up and even reached to 7.8% above yoy whereas no significant change found for chronic diseases.
The uninterrupted treatment for chronic diseases in contrast to the AURIs implies that the governmental and public responses to the pandemic outbreak worked for efficient healthcare provision to patients in needs of regular check-ups and treatment in the middle of an infectious disease crisis.
在 2019 年冠状病毒病（COVID-19）大流行开始时，许多国家的医疗保健系统受到严重干扰，特别是易感染 COVID-19 的老年人可能不愿意接受治疗。
我们使用 2020 年 1 月至 7 月期间的全国性医疗索赔数据进行了中断时间序列分析（ITSA），重点关注 65 至 84 岁患者的不同疾病类别，即急性上呼吸道感染（AURIs）与慢性病。
AURIs 和慢性病在医疗服务利用方面发生了明显变化。首先，慢性病的利用率变化不大，而 AURIs 的利用率在大流行开始时（2020 年第 6 周）同比下降了 20.4%。其次，随着社交距离的放松（2020 年第 17 周），AURIs 患者的趋势上升，甚至达到了同比增长 7.8%，而慢性病没有发现明显变化。
与 AURIs 相比，慢性病的不间断治疗意味着政府和公众对疫情爆发的反应有效地为需要定期检查和治疗的患者提供了高效的医疗服务。
