Abstract
To identify trends in pediatric emergency department (ED) utilization following the COVID-19 pandemic. We performed a cross-sectional study from 37 geographically diverse US children's hospitals. We included ED encounters between January 1, 2010 and December 31, 2020, transformed into time-series data. We constructed ensemble forecasting models of the most common presenting diagnoses and the most common diagnoses leading to admission, using data from 2010 through 2019. We then compared the most common presenting diagnoses and the most common diagnoses leading to admission in 2020 to the forecasts. 29,787,815 encounters were included, of which 1,913,085 (6.4%) occurred during 2020. ED encounters during 2020 were lower compared to prior years, with a 65.1% decrease in April relative to 2010-2019. In forecasting models, encounters for depression and diabetic ketoacidosis remained within the 95% confidence interval [CI]; fever, bronchiolitis, hyperbilirubinemia, skin/subcutaneous infections and seizures occurred within the 80-95% CI during the portions of 2020, and all other diagnoses (abdominal pain, otitis media, asthma, pneumonia, trauma, upper respiratory tract infections, and urinary tract infections) occurred below the predic...Continue Reading
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