ABSTRACT
Background: Health care systems worldwide have rapidly responded to manage the COVID-19 pandemic by providing screening tests, contact tracing, treatment, and vaccination. However, the long duration of the pandemic has had an enormous load on the health care systems, which disrupted continuity of the essential non-covid services, long waiting time for appointments, and increase in the utilization of telemedicine services. Primary health care was established as an essential foundation for the global response to the COVID-19. In Qatar, Primary Heath Care Corporation (PHCC), the main primary care services provided played a major role in the response to the pandemic. However, its services were affected and disrupted, and new services were added. Hence, the aim of this analysis is to understand the long-term impact of the COVID-19 on the services provided by PHCC in Qatar in terms of PHCC pandemic response, change in utilization of the core, and preventative services, and the introduction of new alternative services. Methods: A retrospective data analysis was conducted for all the appointments and visits for all the PHCC health centers in the years of 2020 and 2021. The study conducted a comparison of the services utilizations using the utilization figures of PHCC services between 1st of January and 31st of December 2019 as a reference year. The differences in the utilization per service were presented in frequencies and percentages. Results: The in-person services dropped drastically in 2020 at 36% reduction in compassion to 2019. However, the newly introduced virtual consultation services in 2020 reached their highest utilization figures in 2021 at 908,965 virtual visits. The COVID-19 specific related services ranging from the COVID-19 drive-through testing to vaccine administration constituted a total number of 2,836,127 visits corresponding to 44% of the total PHCC services utilization visits in 2021. In 2021, PHCC dental services dropped by 25.2%. The most noticeable utilization drops in 2021 were among the preventative services with 53.2% and 78.9% in colorectal screening and non-communicable diseases (NCDs) risk factors annual screening services, respectively. However, mental health services have witnessed a surge in utilization at 134.1% increase in 2021 in comparison to 2019. Conclusion: The COVID-19 pandemic caused a disruption in the PHCC utilization of core services, namely dental services. Additionally, PHCC preventive services utilizations were affected drastically including cancer and NCDs risk factors annual screening. Nevertheless, PHCC managed to provide alternative virtual services and played a vital role in responding to the pandemic by leading the COVID-19 vaccination campaign in Qatar. However, future research is needed to establish which vulnerable patient groups were most affected by the pandemic, to continue to inform strategies and policies directed at mitigating the impact of future potential pandemics.
ABSTRACT
BACKGROUND: In the public sector in Qatar, the Primary Health Care Corporation (PHCC) is the major provider of primary healthcare services to families. Therefore, the PHCC conducted the first epidemiological health assessment to understand the burden of diseases and their subsequent risk factors impacting its registered population, to design better services, implement it and allocate resources to respond to the population health needs. METHODS: A cross-sectional study design was adopted among all PHCC registered populations between September 1, 2018, and August 31, 2019. The study target population was all persons residing in Qatar aged 0+ years and registered at the 27 health centers affiliated with the PHCC; excluding patients with an expired residence permit on August 31, 2019, and craft male workers were provided their primary healthcare services at the Qatar Red Crescent health facilities. The data were extracted from patients' electronic medical records (EMR). RESULTS: The burden of type 2 diabetes, hypertension, and dyslipidemia were the highest among the population of the central region at 13.9%, 15.7%, and 11.1%, respectively. Tobacco consumption among males was higher than females and ranged from 25.4% to 27.8%, with the highest rate in the northern region. Obesity rates ranged between 34.7% and 37.0% among the total population registered with the lowest rate in the central region, while 39.9% of females in the northern region had a body mass index above 30 kg/m2. Exclusive breastfeeding at 6 months was significantly lower than that at 4 months across all regions. Children in the northern region had the highest rate of overweight/obesity based on Z-scores. The western region population had the highest number of communicable diseases notifications. CONCLUSION: Understanding the patterns of disease in the local population will enable the PHCC to plan a clear set of services that meet the population's health needs, which include tailored health education and promotion components.
