The Impact of the COVID-19 Pandemic on Pediatric Clinical Practice in Chinese Children’s Hospital: A Retrospective Study

Abstract

COVID-19 has affected the various aspects of social service delivery worldwide. Explicitly, pediatric service was affected mainly due to the travel restrictions, and children were at heightened risk due to these circumstances. Therefore, this study aims to analyze the Pediatric Clinical Practice in a Chinese children’s hospital to describe and acknowledge the impact of COVID-19 on the pediatric healthcare system. For this purpose, the hospital’s outpatient registration database was the primary information source, which comprises demographic data, including age, gender, city of residence, and hospital departments visited. Data on patients admitted from January 25, 2019, to April 16, 2019, were collected and used as a baseline. The results revealed that the number of pediatric visits to the case study hospital decreased during the COVID-19 pandemic, accounting for 40% of that in 2019, especially during the early stage of the pandemic. The proportion of pediatric patients from outside Chongqing decreased by approximately 14% in the early stages and increased by 24% in the second and third stages, corresponding to an overall decrease of 8.5%. Accordingly, the hospital responds to COVID-19 by providing valuable information and a guiding framework to the rest of the world on how to respond to a crisis.