PIN170 The NOVEL Coronavirus Disease (COVID-19): Impacts on TESTS and Hospitalizations Performance in a Health PLAN in Brazil

Objectives: One of the major concerns is the burden COVID-19 will impose on the health care system worldwide Brazil is the second country with the most confirmed cases (more than 1 million cases and 60 thousand deaths) The study aims to evaluate the impact on use of the health plan by COVID-19 Methods: Design: retrospective non-interventional study using population-based health administrative databases Setting: payer provider healthcare organization Participants: 41,640 individuals attended by plan Outcomes: number of prior authorizations to tests and hospitalizations during two periods of 90 days, before (P1) and after (P2) the first registered case of COVID-19 Hospitalizations were classified into surgical, clinical potentially avoidable and other types Statistics: data were analyzed descriptively considering measures of central tendency for continuous variables and frequency measures for categorical variables Microsoft Excel® v2010 and Qlik Sense® v13 21 were used to data and statistics Results: During the study period (180 days), 21,583 patients underwent to tests, 15,018 in P1 and 6,565 in P2, a reduction of 56 3% and 3,316 hospitalizations occurred (P1=2,066;P2=1,250;reduction of 39 5%) Segmented analysis of hospitalizations demonstrates 69 8% reduction in surgical cases (1,043, P1=801 and P2=242) and 20 1% in clinical admissions (2 089, P1=1,161 and P2=928) We also observed a 37 2% reduction in cases of potentially preventable hospitalizations All other types decreased 23 1% (184, P1=104 and P2=80) Conclusions: Local health guidelines recommended to postpone procedures due risk of COVID-19 infection during hospital stay and block of hospital beds to attend to the pandemic After the critical period, we observed a rising curve suggesting a gradual return to standard performance of tests (+80 6%), not yet observed in hospitalizations (+0 2%) The behavior of beneficiaries, professionals and health services that resulted in the postponement of procedures contributed to avoid the collapse of the Brazilian health system during the pandemic period