COVID-19 Vaccination and Healthcare Demand.

One of the driving concerns during any epidemic is the strain on the healthcare system. As we have seen many times over the globe with the COVID-19 pandemic, hospitals and ICUs can quickly become overwhelmed by cases. While strict periods of public health mitigation have certainly helped decrease incidence and thus healthcare demand, vaccination is the only clear long-term solution. In this paper, we develop a two-module model to forecast the effects of relaxation of non-pharmaceutical intervention and vaccine uptake on daily incidence, and the cascade effects on healthcare demand. The first module is a simple epidemiological model which incorporates non-pharmaceutical intervention, the relaxation of such measures and vaccination campaigns to predict caseloads into the Fall of 2021. This module is then fed into a healthcare module which can forecast the number of doctor visits, the number of occupied hospital beds, number of occupied ICU beds and any excess demand of these. From this module, we can also estimate the length of stay of individuals in ICU. For model verification and forecasting, we use the four most populous Canadian provinces as a case study.

The relationship between family physician density and health related outcomes: the Canadian evidence.

This paper analyzes if and to what extent the density of family physicians influences health related outcomes in Canada. The density of family physicians in a given region is assumed to serve as proxy for the access to and availability of desirable primary care services. We use self-reported general and mental health status as our overall health outcome measures. We also use several quality of care indicators reflecting whether or not an individual received influenza immunization, mammography, pap smear, and colorectal cancer screening if at high-risk. The empirical results of this study suggest that an additional family physician per 10,000 population has a statistically significant impact in the order of 2% to 4% on self-reported general health status, as well as, other quality of care outcomes. We also find important socioeconomic and demographic factors, such as income, education and immigrant status, influencing health related outcomes considered in this study. Understanding the influence of physician density and socioeconomic factors on health related outcomes are important considerations for health policy and planning.