The Impact of COVID-19 on Volume of Inpatient Hospitalization Through General Medicine and Medicine Subspecialty Services at US Medical Centers

As the coronavirus disease 2019 pandemic continues to impact hospital systems both in the United States and throughout the world, it is important to understand how the pandemic has impacted the volume of hospital admissions. Using the Vizient Inc (Chicago, IL) clinical databases, we analyzed inpatient hospital discharges from the general medicine service and its subspecialty services including cardiology, neonatology, pulmonary/critical care, oncology, psychiatry, and neurology between December 2019 and July 2020. We compared baseline discharge data to that of the first six months of the pandemic, from February to July 2020. We set the baseline as discharges by specialty from February 2019 through January 2020, averaged over the 12 months. Compared to baseline, by April 2020 the volume of general medicine hospital discharge was reduced by -20.2%, from 235,581 to 188,027 discharges. We found that while overall the number of discharges decreased from baseline, with a nadir in April 2020, pulmonary/critical care services had an increase in hospital discharge volume throughout the pandemic, from 7534 at baseline to 15,792 discharges in April. These findings are important for understanding health care use during the pandemic and ensuring proper allocation of resources and funding throughout the coronavirus disease 2019 pandemic.