Modeling the “Covid failure” of planned hospitalization during the height of the COVID-19 pandemic: analysis and assessment of losses of used bed capacity of a specialized otolaryngology hospital
Authors:   Saint Petersburg Research Institute of Ear, Throat, Nose and Speech,  Saint Petersburg, 190013, Russia, Korneenkov A. A. , Ovchinnikov P. A. ,   Vishnevsky 3 Central Military Clinical Hospital, Krasnogorsk, 143409, Russia, Vyazemskaya E. E. ,   Saint Petersburg Research Institute of Ear, Throat, Nose and Speech,  Saint Petersburg, 190013, Russia, Medvedeva A. Yu. ,   Saint Petersburg Research Institute of Ear, Throat, Nose and Speech,  Saint Petersburg, 190013, Russia, Yanov Yu. K. ,   Mechnikov North-Western State Medical University, Saint Petersburg, 191015, Russia,   Kirov Military Medical Academy, Saint Petersburg, 194044, Russia
Published: June 2024

Introduction. In the midst of the COVID-19 pandemic, healthcare organizations around the world were forced to change their operating hours, and some, especially those providing specialized medical care, were forced to stop operating completely. The purpose of the study is to develop a year-by-year model of the movement of patients before the pandemic and at its height, based on long-term data on the movement of inpatients. With its help, analyze possible losses in bed capacity (expressed in the number of idle bed days, or unserved patients) from the pandemic during 2020 — the year of the height of the pandemic. Materials and methods. The study was carried out according to the design of an observational retrospective analytical study. As research materials, we used anonymized data on the number of patients in the hospital at the Federal State Budgetary Institution «St. Petersburg Research Institute of ENT» of the Ministry of Health of Russia, obtained from the medical registration form N 007/u-02 „Sheet of daily records of the movement of patients and the bed capacity of a round-the-clock hospital, day hospital at a hospital facility“). The R and RStudio software environment was used as the main software product for solving statistical problems. Results. A load model has been created (the number of daily inpatients undergoing treatment) during the year. An analytical model of the “Covid failure” of bed capacity utilization during the height of the pandemic has been created. The coordinates of the dynamic points of bed release and return to typical bed occupancy values for this period of time were calculated (using linear regression forecasting). The share of hospital losses during the pandemic was calculated and assessed. Discussion. The use of “Covid failure” data superimposed on “pre-Covid” indicators allows not only to estimate annual losses, but also to predictively minimize losses during planned closures of hospital beds, for example, for repairs, given that the resumption of work of a medical institution’s beds will often be slower than the speed at which work stops. Analysis of linear regression coefficients of bed release and occupancy rates can give an idea of the speed of reaching standard values for the volume of medical care. As studies have shown during the COVID-19 pandemic, the minimum value of the quarantine period after the complete vacancy of beds is 14 days, and for high-risk scenarios 21 days. Based on this, for the conditions of organizing medical otorhinolaryngological care, the minimum predicted value of the time from the closure of hospitalization to its opening may be about 37 days after the start of patient discharge. The approach and mathematical functionality presented in the article can be used on the initial data of other institutions, as well as in preparation for the “Disease X” pandemic.