Alliance for Pandemic Preparedness

June 18, 2020

Measure What Matters: Counts of Hospitalized Patients Are a Better Metric for Health System Capacity Planning for a Reopening

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  • Kashyap et al. used data from Stanford University medical facilities between March 2 and April 11, 2020 to measure to the impact of Shelter-In-Place orders on hospital utilization. They observed a marked slowdown in the hospitalization rate within ten days of Shelter-In-Place orders and a shift toward younger ages among COVID-19 patients. The authors discuss that current published prediction models use case counts that do not account for the demographic distributions of COVID-19 patients and that age stratified local hospitalization rates could improve modeling accuracy to estimate the resource burden on health systems. 

Kashyap et al. (June 17, 2020). Measure What Matters: Counts of Hospitalized Patients Are a Better Metric for Health System Capacity Planning for a Reopening. Journal of the American Medical Informatics Association. https://doi.org/10.1093/jamia/ocaa076