Abstract
The fragility of healthcare systems worldwide had not been exposed by any pandemic until now. The lack of integrated methods for bed capacity planning compromises the effectiveness of public and private hospitals' services. To estimate the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on the provision of intensive care unit and clinical beds for Brazilian states, using an integrated model. Experimental study applying healthcare informatics to data on COVID-19 cases from the official electronic platform of the Brazilian Ministry of Health. A predictive model based on the historical records of Brazilian states was developed to estimate the need for hospital beds during the COVID-19 pandemic. The proposed model projected in advance that there was a lack of 22,771 hospital beds for Brazilian states, of which 38.95% were ICU beds, and 61.05% were clinical beds. The proposed approach provides valuable information to help hospital managers anticipate actions for improving healthcare system capacity.
Highlights
The novel severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2) disease[1,2,3] was first reported in Wuhan, China, in December 2019
The model considers two different periods of the pandemic: May and August 2020. It uses the historical records of COVID‐19 cases[59] to estimate future infections for each state and project the intensive care unit (ICU) and clinical bed use for a period of 365 days
The model periodically adjusts to the real number of cases, providing a fair estimate of future cases of infection
Summary
The novel severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2) disease[1,2,3] was first reported in Wuhan, China, in December 2019. Political leaders and healthcare managers have endeavored to estimate the demand for intensive care unit (ICU) and clinical beds to guard against the possibility of collapse of the healthcare system. A lack of consensus on public healthcare policy[11,12] compromised use of integrated and coordinated NPIs to reduce COVID-19 mortality and healthcare demand. OBJECTIVES: To estimate the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on the provision of intensive care unit and clinical beds for Brazilian states, using an integrated model. METHODS: A predictive model based on the historical records of Brazilian states was developed to estimate the need for hospital beds during the COVID-19 pandemic. RESULTS: The proposed model projected in advance that there was a lack of 22,771 hospital beds for Brazilian states, of which 38.95% were ICU beds, and 61.05% were clinical beds. CONCLUSIONS: The proposed approach provides valuable information to help hospital managers anticipate actions for improving healthcare system capacity
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