Health care utilization after COVID-19 in persons with non-communicable diseases in Rio Grande, Rio Grande do Sul, BrazilThe aim is to evaluate the health care utilization after COVID-19 in people with non-communicable diseases (NCDs) living in Rio Grande, Rio Grande do Sul, Brazil. We used data from the Sulcovid-19, a longitudinal study carried out with individuals who had COVID-19. Overall, 2,919 participants were asked if they attended any health care services after COVID-19 infection. We asked participants about medical diagnosis of systemic arterial hypertension (SAH), diabetes mellitus (DM), respiratory diseases (RD), and heart diseases (HD). We used poisson regression to assess the association between health care utilization and NCDs. Having a NCD was associated with an increased likelihood of using urgent and emergency services (prevalence ratio [PR] 1.67, 95%CI 1.33; 2.11). An increased use of specialized services (i.e., cardiologist) is highlighted among individuals with at least one NCD (PR 3.77, 95%CI 2.97; 4.80), SAH (PR 3.47, 95%CI 2.97; 4.31), and DM (PR 3.87, 95%CI 3.11; 4.81). People with NCDs required more health care services after COVID-19, regardless of their disease when compared to those without it.
Key words:
COVID-19; Health services research; Noncommunicable diseases
Thumbnail
*Excluded due to lack of information such as address and telephone. **Individuals who did not respond to the three telephone contacts and who were not found at home during home visits were considered losses. Individuals whose addresses could not be found were also considered lost. *** Individuals’ refusals included, among others, lack of time and interest in talking about their infection. Source: Authors.