Trend in the Admissions of Patients with Respiratory Symptoms During COVID-19 Pandemic and its Impact Toward Hospital Perspective

Background: Our understanding regarding trends in the admissions of patient with respiratory symptoms during COVID‑19 pandemic, including pre-existing medical conditions and social psychological background, is limited. To what extent the trend of hospital admission and its implications still needs to be explored.Objective: To evaluate temporal trend in the hospital admissions of patient with respiratory symptoms during COVID‑19 pandemic, and its implication to disease conditions, costs of care, clinical and financial outcomes.Methods: A retrospective cohort study with total sampling was conducted from 1 May 2018 (before the COVID-19 pandemic) until February 28, 2022. This study used SPSS and Smart-PLS for hypothesis testing and path analysis.Results: There was a reduction in hospitalisations for respiratory disorders unrelated to COVID-19 during the pandemic by 55.3% in children and 47.8% in adults. During pandemic, the average hospital revenue per patient of child and adult patients increased significantly, but the profit of insurance claims per patient decreased. Pathway analysis showed that Pandemic was associated with increased severity of child patients, reduced severity of adult patients, increased costs for drugs, increased LOS, and decreased total hospital revenues. The more severe the patient's condition, the higher the cost of treatment, the higher the LOS, the lower the hospital's revenue. An increase in LOS is associated with an increase in the cost of care.Conclusion: COVID-19 pandemic changed trend of hospital admission profile. There are several impacts of this trends toward disease conditions, costs of care, clinical and financial outcome.Funding Information: None declared.Declaration of Interests: The authors declare no conflict of interest regarding this work.Ethics Approval Statement: The study was conducted according to the guidelines of the Declaration of Helsinki and approved for exempt review by the Research Ethics Committee of of Dr. Soetomo General Academic Hospital, Surabaya, Indonesia (2022), with reference number 0813/LOE/301.4.2/I/2022. The Research Ethics Committee of stated that the research protocol document above complies with The Office for the Human Research Protection (OHRP) under the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) Regulation requirements 45 CFR section 46 for exempt review. Written informed consent was waived because this research was restricted to the use of clinical and cost-of treatment from existing medical records.