Researchers at National Health Insurance Service Release New Data on COVID-19 (Healthcare utilisation for elderly people at the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic in South Korea): Coronavirus – COVID-19

2022 MAY 20 (NewsRx) -- By a News Reporter-Staff News Editor at NewsRx COVID-19 Daily -- Researchers detail new data in COVID-19. According to news reporting originating from the National Health Insurance Service by NewsRx correspondents, research stated, “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.”

The news journalists obtained a quote from the research from National Health Insurance Service: “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.”

According to the news reporters, the research concluded: “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.”

For more information on this research see: Healthcare utilisation for elderly people at the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic in South Korea. BMC Geriatrics, 2022,22(1):1-11. (BMC Geriatrics - http://bmcgeriatr.biomedcentral.com). The publisher for BMC Geriatrics is BMC.

A free version of this journal article is available at https://doi.org/10.1186/s12877-022-03085-5.

Our news editors report that additional information may be obtained by contacting K. Park, Health Insurance Research Institute, National Health Insurance Service. Additional authors for this research include J. Byeon, Y. Yang, H. Cho.

(Our reports deliver fact-based news of research and discoveries from around the world.)