Abstract
Aim
To evaluate the impact of the COVID‐19 pandemic on clinical outcomes, we used data from Electronic Health Records from 128 patients receiving care at a First Episode Psychosis clinic.
Methods
Rates of admission or emergency room (ER) visits from January 2020 to July 2020 were analysed using difference‐in‐difference regression. We used the same weeks in 2019 to control for seasonality.
Results
We found 17 hospitalizations or ER visits between 1 January 2020 and 13 March 2020 (incidence rate: 71.4 events/1000 person‐weeks) and 6 between 14 March 2020 and 20 June 2020 (incidence rate: 18.5 events/1000 person‐weeks) for an incidence rate ratio of 0.26. The severity of presentation worsened after transition to telemedicine. No signs of significant interruptions of care were found.
Conclusions
We report that patients have avoided accessing higher levels of care, except in extreme cases. We argue that this is not a sustainable trajectory and that public health actions are required.