1724P Changes in the outpatient and inpatient clinic admissions during COVID-19 pandemic: Anticipating and mitigating risks for cancer patients

Background: Prioritizing the continuum of care for cancer patients while maximizing patient safety is of paramount importance However, COVID-19 pandemic could create a collateral damage in all domains of cancer care Here, we evaluate the early changes in the inpatient and outpatient oncology clinics and discuss how we currently anticipate and mitigate risks for cancer patients at the Hacettepe University Cancer Institute by employing adaptive algorithms Methods: Patients applying the outpatient clinic and outpatient palliative care (OPC) clinic for the first time and patients admitted to wards in the first 30 days after the first case of COVID-19 in Turkey were evaluated This data was compared to data from the same time frame in the previous three years Results: A total of 868 inpatient and 809 outpatient admissions were evaluated in the study with a 114 OPC clinic admissions The mean number of daily new patient applications to the outpatient clinic (9 87±3 87 vs 6 43±4 03, p<0 001) and OPC clinic (3 87±1 49 vs 1 13±1 46, p<0 001) was significantly reduced compared to the previous years The reduction in new patient numbers was observed for all tumor types with the exception of lung and head and neck cancers While the number of inpatient admissions was similar for a month frame (228 vs 213), the median duration of hospitalization was significantly reduced (2 vs 3 days) The frequency of hospitalizations for chemotherapy was higher than in previous years (p<0 001) By comparison, the rate of hospitalizations for palliative care (P=0 028) or elective interventional procedures (P=0 001) was significantly reduced Conclusions: In our experience, continuing the patients’ treatment with simple precautions was possible with simple measures There were significant drops in the numbers of newly diagnosed patients and patients having palliative care services and these problems should be incorporated into the risk mitigation algorithms Legal entity responsible for the study: The authors Funding: Has not received any funding Disclosure: All authors have declared no conflicts of interest