Zi trend report: Significant increase in the number of cases in child and adolescent psychotherapy
27.10.2021 10:53
As in 2020, infection protection measures in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic led to lower use of medical services in the first half of 2021. Due to the fourth wave of the pandemic, the number of cases across all specialist groups in the first few months of this year was below the values of 2019 (-14.9 percent in January and -12 percent in February). In April and May the total number of cases was still below the previous year's level; It was only in June that they almost reached the pre-pandemic level of 2019 (-1.9 percent).
The use of services in the field of child and adolescent psychotherapy has developed noticeably. This was even 8 percent higher than the pre-pandemic comparison period of the first six months of 2019. In June 2021, the number of cases here was 37 percent higher than in June 2019. Pediatricians and adolescent doctors also showed an increase of 39 at the end of the second quarter .6 percent strong catch-up effects. Overall, however, the number of cases with personal doctor-patient contact in pediatric care remained 13.2 percent behind those in the first half of 2019. For general practitioners the overall decline was 5.4 percent and for specialists it was 2.1 percent.
These are the central results of the trend report on the development of statutory health services in the first half of 2021 published by the Central Institute for Statutory Health Insurance (Zi) on October 27, 2021. “The sharp increase in child and adolescent psychotherapeutic care is cause for concern and must be closely monitored be monitored. For a long time, the focus of public attention was on seriously ill COVID-19 patients and vulnerable groups. Because there were hardly any severe cases among children and young people, they were below the political and social radar for a long time. The massive psychological stress on those under 18 years old, apparently caused by the pandemic, is now increasingly noticeable in outpatient care,” said Zi CEO Dr. Dominik von Stillfried.
The use of medical practices is also becoming visible in those that are so important for health prevention Early detection examinations, continued von Stillfried: “Regardless of the numerous restrictions in everyday medical care, the contracted doctors continued to deliver under high pressure, even under pandemic conditions. Compared to 2019, the first half of 2021 saw an increase in early detection examinations for children (5.7 percent), mammography screening (8.6 percent) and early detection colonoscopy (9.4 percent). Only skin cancer screening has fallen further by 14.3 percent compared to 2019.”
At the same time, the downward trend observed in 2020 continued Emergency and on-call service 2021 continues. “We assume that these declines in the number of cases are primarily related to a pandemic-related reduction in other acute cases. Here we see a real collapse in utilization. Our data shows declines of 18 percent compared to the first half of 2019. The effect is therefore even clearer than in the first half of 2020,” explained the Zi CEO.
While the number of treatment cases with personal doctor-patient contact fell overall from January to June 2021 compared to 2019, the cases with telephone consultation and contact via video consultation continued to rise compared to the same period last year. During this period, almost 4.1 million telephone consultations performed; That was almost 1.4 million more than in the same time window in 2019. In addition, there were a further 1 million hours of telephone advice, which were paid for through the surcharges that were temporarily included in the uniform assessment standard (EBM) in the first half of 2021.
With a total of almost 2.6 million Video consultations These were also offered more frequently in the first half of 2021 than in the same period in 2019 or 2020 (+2,256,591 compared to 2019 and +785,289 compared to 2020). However, a decreasing trend can be seen from March 2021.
In the first half of 2021, there were a total of around 13.3 million reasons for treatment due to clinical suspicion or evidence of one SARS-CoV-2 infection. During this time, around 5.65 million PCR tests for SARS-CoV-2 were billed to contractual doctors.
For the current trend report, 16 of the 17 statutory health insurance associations provided the Zi with aggregated information from the billing data from the first quarter of 2019 to the first quarter of 2021 as well as early information from the billing data from the second quarter of 2021. The data was evaluated to determine how the number of cases and the number of billing physicians as well as the frequencies of certain service categories changed in 2020 and 2021 compared to 2019. The report follows on from the results of the Zi trend report for the first four quarters of 2020.