571 - The Effect of Government Mandated Physical Distancing on Pediatric Health System Volumes

Poster Number: 571
Publication Number: 571.240

Karyssa A. Bobosky, Beaumont Children's Hospital, troy, MI, United States; Stacey A. Shubeck, Beaumont Health System, Waterford, MI, United States; Margaret Menoch, Beaumont Health, Birmingham, MI, United States; Andrea T. Scheid, Beaumont Children's Hospital, Royal Oak, MI, United States; Bassam Gebara, Beaumont Children's Hospital, Royal Oak, MI, United States

Background: Extreme social distancing and government ordered shut-downs early in the covid pandemic resulted in drastic decreases in volume in pediatric emergency (PED) visits everywhere. Michigan’s Governor Whitmer was in the national news frequently over the mandates early on. No one has looked at this specifically and how it related to hospital volumes, comparing multiple hospital settings.

Objective: The objective was to observe the relation of PED visit volume to inpatient, newborn, and outpatient volume trends with the emergency order due to covid, to plan accordingly for any future pandemics of this kind.

Design/Methods: Pediatric visits to 2 large tertiary hospitals from 1/1/2018 to 12/31/2020 for outpatient therapy encounters, emergency room visits, surgeries, newborn births, and inpatient pediatric hospital admissions. Demographics, visit diagnosis, department, and date were extracted. The data was divided into annual quarters, stratified by age, location, and diagnosis per encounter and trended through the 3-year study period. This was done through comparison between the 2nd quarter of 2020 after the mandate took effect and earlier periods in time.

Results: 356,336 total visits occurred during this time. There was a 59.3% decrease between the 1st quarter (1/1-3/31) and the 2nd quarter (4/1-6/30) of 2020. The total volume of 7780 patients in the 2nd quarter of 2020 was 1/3 of the volume seen in the 2nd quarter of 2019. The most marked decrease was seen in children aged 2 to 10 years old. In April of 2019, the 2-10 year old group accounted for 64.9% of total pediatric patients, compared to April of 2020, when they accounted for 24.8% of pediatric visits overall. In contrast, encounters for those less than 1 year of age, including newborn deliveries, encompassed 56.3% of pediatric encounters in April of 2020 compared to 13.9% in April of 2019. There was no significant change in the average number of births between each quarter. The proportion of adolescent visits also remained stable. Outpatient visits for language disorders decreased most drastically.Conclusion(s): Following the executive order by highly publicized Governor Whitmer on March 24th, 2020, mandating physical distancing, overall pediatric visits declined. Newborn births and adolescent visits were stable, where all other age visits declined. Staffing of the hospital was affected due to this decline. This information is valuable for future pandemic planning as well as population health.
Bobosky_cv_august2021.pdf
Number of Encounters by Age GroupGraph 2