Impact of COVID-19 on primary care contacts with children and young people in England: longitudinal trends study 2015–2020

The British journal of general practice: the journal of the Royal College of General Practitioners

article

Kimberley A Foley¹  Edward J Maile¹  Alex Bottle¹  Francesca K Neale¹  Russell M Viner²  Simon E Kenny³  Azeem Majeed¹  Dougal S Hargreaves⁴  Sonia Saxena¹ 

[1]Department of Primary Care and Public Health, Imperial College London

[2]Population, Policy & Practice Research Programme, UCL Great Ormond Street Institute of Child Health Population Policy and Practice

[3]Alder Hey Children’s NHS Foundation Trust, professor, Department of Women’s and Children’s Health, University of Liverpool, Liverpool, national clinical director

[4]Mohn Centre for Children’s Health and Wellbeing, Imperial College London

关键词: adolescent;    child;    COVID-19;    general practice;    primary health care;   

DOI  :  10.3399/BJGP.2021.0643

学科分类：卫生学

来源: Royal College of General Practitioners

【 摘 要 】

Background The NHS response to COVID-19 altered provision and access to primary care.Aim To examine the impact of COVID-19 on GP contacts with children and young people (CYP) in England.Design and setting A longitudinal trends analysis was undertaken using electronic health records from the Clinical Practice Research Datalink (CPRD) Aurum database.Method All CYP aged <25 years registered with a GP in the CPRD Aurum database were included. The number of total, remote, and face-to-face contacts during the first UK lockdown (March to June 2020) were compared with the mean contacts for comparable weeks from 2015 to 2019.Results90%). Remote contacts more than doubled, increasing most in infants (over 2.5-fold). Total contacts for respiratory illnesses fell by 74% whereas contacts for common non-transmissible conditions shifted largely to remote contacts, mitigating the total fall (31%).Conclusion During the COVID-19 pandemic, CYP’s contact with GPs fell, particularly for face-to-face assessments. This may be explained by a lower incidence of respiratory illnesses because of fewer social contacts and changing health-seeking behaviour. The large shift to remote contacts mitigated total falls in contacts for some age groups and for common non-transmissible conditions.

【 授权许可】

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