Department of Primary Care and Public Health, Imperial College London, London, UK.
Department of Primary Care and Public Health, Imperial College London, London, UK
BMJ Open. 2022 Aug 8;12(8):e060961. doi: 10.1136/bmjopen-2022-060961.
To describe the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on outpatient appointments for children and young people.
All National Health Service (public) hospitals in England.
All people in England aged <25 years.
Outpatient department attendance numbers, rates and modes (face to face vs telephone) by age group, sex and socioeconomic deprivation.
Compared with the average for January 2017 to December 2019, there was a 3.8 million appointment shortfall (23.5%) for the under-25 population in England between March 2020 and February 2021, despite a total rise in phone appointments of 2.6 million during that time. This was true for each age group, sex and deprivation fifth, but there were smaller decreases in face to face and total appointments for babies under 1 year. For all ages combined, around one in six first and one in four follow-up appointments were by phone in the most recent period. The proportion of appointments attended was high, at over 95% for telephone and over 90% for face-to-face appointments for all ages.
COVID-19 led to a dramatic fall in total outpatient appointments and a large rise in the proportion of those appointments conducted by telephone. The impact that this has had on patient outcomes is still unknown. The differential impact of COVID-19 on outpatient activity in different sociodemographic groups may also inform design of paediatric outpatient services in the post-COVID period.
描述 COVID-19 大流行对儿童和青少年门诊预约的影响。
英格兰所有国民保健制度（公立）医院。
英格兰所有年龄<25 岁的人。
按年龄组、性别和社会经济剥夺程度划分的门诊部就诊人数、就诊率和就诊方式（面对面与电话）。
与 2017 年 1 月至 2019 年 12 月的平均水平相比，2020 年 3 月至 2021 年 2 月期间，英格兰 25 岁以下人群的预约量减少了 380 万（23.5%），尽管在此期间电话预约量总共增加了 260 万。这在每个年龄组、性别和贫困程度五组中都是如此，但 1 岁以下婴儿的面对面和总预约量减少幅度较小。所有年龄段的人加起来，最近一次约有六分之一的初诊和约四分之一的随访是通过电话进行的。预约就诊率高，所有年龄段的电话预约就诊率均超过 95%，面对面预约就诊率超过 90%。
COVID-19 导致总门诊预约量大幅下降，通过电话进行的预约比例大幅上升。这对患者预后的影响尚不清楚。COVID-19 对不同社会人口群体门诊活动的不同影响也可能为 COVID-19 后儿科门诊服务的设计提供信息。
