📄 Abstract
The global outbreak of COVID-19 has greatly influenced the health care delivery system and health seeking behavior by patients. This study aimed to explore the missed patient appointments and the factors lead to missed appointments, at an academic medical institution in South India during COVID-19 pandemic. The study used descriptive retrospective survey design to collect register based data from all departments of the hospital during the period 1st January 2020 to 30th June 2020. Among the 8390 missed patient appointments reported during this period, 4670 patients were included in the sampling frame and 130 samples were selected using systematic sampling. Socio demographic variables, clinical variables and reasons for missed appointments were collected from hospital data base and telephonic interview. Age ranged from 1 month to 85 years with the median age of 42 (± 22.9) years. Male female ratio was 1:1. Of this 69.5% (90) patients were married and 41.5% was educated up to high school. Majority of the cases (57.7%) belonged to nuclear family; highest representation was from the economic non priority subsidy. More than half of missed appointments were noted in the medicine department and the most of the appointments was review cases. Reported reasons for missed appointments were personal constraints (50.8%), financial and family constraints (5.4%) time constraints (5.4%) hospital related reasons (4.6%) and COVID-19 related reasons (2.3%). During COVID-19 pandemic there was no significant number of missed appointments in the study centre. The missed appointment group belonged to non priority economic category. The majority of cases found were review appointments. When enquiries were marked departmental-wise for the missed appointments, medical departments had more missed appointments than others. The present study highlights the need for developing strategies to ensure healthy flow of non COVID health care services during pandemic period.
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📚 How to Cite:
Presthiena E L Lofi, Indu K Gopi, P R Varghese, Praveenlal Kuttichira , COVID-19 PANDEMIC: MISSED INITIAL AND FOLLOW UP APPOINTMENTS AT AN ACADEMIC MEDICAL INSTITUTION IN SOUTH INDIA , Volume 7 , Issue 4, april 2021, EPRA International Journal of Multidisciplinary Research (IJMR) , DOI: https://doi.org/10.36713/epra6772