2023 Volume 93 Issue 5 Pages 585-593
The COVID-19 pandemic has had various influences on hospital clinical activities. However, which factors significantly prevented hospitals for providing ordinary patient care during the COVID-19 pandemic have not yet been determined. We sent a questionnaire to 4,825 hospitals with over 100 beds. They were asked how many ventilators, ECMO machines, hemodialysis machines and portable negative-pressure systems their hospitals were equipped with, as well as the number of infection-control staff and clinical engineers to operate these types of medical equipment. They were also asked whether the COVID-19 pandemic restricted any healthcare services to ordinary patients as well as COVID-19 patient. Healthcare services were classified as examination, drug administration, surgery, inpatient care other than surgery and outpatient care. A total of 257 hospitals （5%） answered the questionnaire. According to the answers, neither the number of admitted CODID-19 patients nor lack of infection-control staff significantly interfered with healthcare services to patients. It was suggested that appropriate assignment of technical staff in proportion to both the number and type of medical equipment is important for providing treatment to severe COVID-19 patients more efficiently.
