Pandemic Pressures and Public Health Care: Evidence from England
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Publication Date
2022-01-24Series
Cambridge Working Papers in Economics
Janeway Institute Working Paper Series
Publisher
Faculty of Economics, University of Cambridge
Type
Working Paper
Metadata
Show full item recordCitation
Fetzer, T., & Rauh, C. (2022). Pandemic Pressures and Public Health Care: Evidence from England. https://doi.org/10.17863/CAM.81924
Abstract
This paper documents that the COVID-19 pandemic induced pressures on the
health care system have significant adverse knock-on effects on the
accessibility and quality of non-COVID-19 care. We observe persistently
worsened performance and longer waiting times in A&E; drastically limited
access to specialist care; notably delayed or inaccessible diagnostic services;
acutely undermined access to and quality of cancer care. We find that providers
under COVID-19 pressures experience notably more excess deaths among non-COVID
related hospital episodes such as, for example, for treatment of heart attacks.
We estimate there to be at least one such non-COVID-19 related excess death
among patients being admitted to hospital for non-COVID-19 reasons for every 30
COVID-19 deaths that is caused by the disruption to the quality of care due to
COVID-19. In total, this amounts to 4,003 non COVID-19 excess deaths from March
2020 to February 2021. Further, there are at least 32,189 missing cancer
patients that should counterfactually have started receiving treatment which
suggests continued increased numbers of excess deaths in the future due to
delayed access to care in the past.
Keywords
Health, Externalities, COVID-19, Coronavirus, Excess deaths, Cancer, NHS, Public health care
Identifiers
CWPE2207, JIWP2204
External DOI: https://doi.org/10.17863/CAM.81924
This record's URL: https://www.repository.cam.ac.uk/handle/1810/334506
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