Quantifying activity reduction: planning for higher levels of acuity
This phenomenon could be applied to a range of other medical and surgical conditions and it’s possible that during the pandemic patients have a higher threshold to report the signs and symptoms of underlying health conditions – possibly due to a fear of contracting the virus whilst hospitalised or patients not wishing to put any additional strain on the NHS – and therefore there could be a sizeable proportion of the population with undiagnosed health conditions.
This analysis aims to help providers to plan their response to the higher levels of acuity they are likely to be faced with after the pandemic is under control. In addition a reduction in the number of elective diagnostic procedures could have impacts on the timing of cancer diagnosis and it would be useful to quantify this reduction in order to assist planning of future activity in the recovery period.