News Scan for Jan 31, 2022
Medicare patient care-seeking for severe mental illness down in COVID-19Significantly fewer adult Medicare beneficiaries with schizophrenia or bipolar 1 disorders had mental health-related outpatient, emergency department (ED), and hospital visits, as well as fills for antipsychotics and mood-stabilizing drugs in the first 8 months of the COVID-19 pandemic.The findings, published late last week in JAMA Network Open, suggest that people with serious mental illness experienced substantial disruptions in care amid the pandemic, especially among the disadvantaged, the researchers said.Led by Harvard Medical School investigators, the study included more than 650,000 Medicare beneficiaries diagnosed as having schizophrenia or bipolar 1 disorders.
The researchers compared care patterns from January to September 2020 with those in the same period in 2019.Relative to 2019, outpatient mental health visits during the first month of the pandemic fell from 265,169 (36.7%) to 200,590 (29.2%), a 20.3% decrease.
In the same period, fills of antipsychotics and mood stabilizers dropped from 216,468 (29.9%) to 163,796 (23.9%), also a 20.3% decline.
Similarly, ED visits fell from 12,383 (1.7%) to 8,503 (1.2%), a 27.7% decrease, and hospitalizations declined from 11,564 (1.6%) to 7,912 (1.2%), a 27.9% decrease.From Aug 3 to 30, 2020, visits rebounded somewhat but were still lower than in 2019, ranging from a relative decline of 2.5% for outpatient visits to 12.9% for hospital admissions.
United States
|
Cases: 46 252 513
Deaths: 750 423
Recovered: 0
|
India
|
Cases: 34 321 025
Deaths: 459 652
Recovered: 0
|
Brazil
|
Cases: 21 835 785
Deaths: 608 235
Recovered: 0
|
United Kingdom
|
Cases: 9 215 683
Deaths: 141 607
Recovered: 0
|
Russia
|
Cases: 8 494 589
Deaths: 237 619
Recovered: 0
|