scholarly journals Evaluating the Impact of the COVID-19 Pandemic on New Cancer Diagnoses and Oncology Care in Manitoba

2021 ◽  
Vol 28 (4) ◽  
pp. 3081-3090
Author(s):  
Kathleen M. Decker ◽  
Pascal Lambert ◽  
Allison Feely ◽  
Oliver Bucher ◽  
Julian O. Kim ◽  
...  

Individuals with cancer are vulnerable to infection with SARS-CoV-2, the virus causing COVID-19. Physical distancing, the reallocation of health care resources, and the implementation of procedures to reduce the spread of COVID-19 may also have serious consequences for people with cancer. We evaluated the impact of COVID-19 on new cancer diagnoses and oncology care in Manitoba, Canada using an interrupted time series design and data from the Manitoba Cancer Registry and CancerCare Manitoba’s (CCMB) electronic medical record. In April 2020, there was a 23% decrease in new cancer diagnoses, a 21% decrease in pathology reports, and a 43% reduction in surgical resections. There was no difference in new cancer diagnoses by August 2020, surgery by July 2020, and pathology reports by September 2020. From April 2020 to June 2021, there was a 13% decrease in radiotherapy (RT) fractions, an 18% decrease in UCC visits, and a 52% decrease in in-person visits. There was no change in intravenous chemotherapy visits per month, first RT visits, or overall patient visits. The impact of COVID-19 on shifts in the stage at diagnosis and survival will be assessed in future analyses.

2019 ◽  
Vol 19 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Jayna Holroyd-Leduc ◽  
◽  
Charmalee Harris ◽  
Jemila S. Hamid ◽  
Joycelyne E. Ewusie ◽  
...  

Abstract Background As the population ages, older hospitalized patients are at increased risk for hospital-acquired morbidity. The Mobilization of Vulnerable Elders (MOVE) program is an evidence-informed early mobilization intervention that was previously evaluated in Ontario, Canada. The program was effective at improving mobilization rates and decreasing length of stay in academic hospitals. The aim of this study was to scale-up the program and conduct a replication study evaluating the impact of the evidence-informed mobilization intervention on various units in community hospitals within a different Canadian province. Methods The MOVE program was tailored to the local context at four community hospitals in Alberta, Canada. The study population was patients aged 65 years and older who were admitted to medicine, surgery, rehabilitation and intensive care units between July 2015 and July 2016. The primary outcome was patient mobilization measured by conducting visual audits twice a week, three times a day. The secondary outcomes included hospital length of stay obtained from hospital administrative data, and perceptions of the intervention assessed through a qualitative assessment. Using an interrupted time series design, the intervention was evaluated over three time periods (pre-intervention, during, and post-intervention). Results A total of 3601 patients [mean age 80.1 years (SD = 8.4 years)] were included in the overall analysis. There was a significant increase in mobilization at the end of the intervention period compared to pre-intervention, with 6% more patients out of bed (95% confidence interval (CI) 1, 11; p-value = 0.0173). A decreasing trend in median length of stay was observed, where patients on average stayed an estimated 3.59 fewer days (95%CI -15.06, 7.88) during the intervention compared to pre-intervention period. Conclusions MOVE is a low-cost, effective and adaptable intervention that improves mobilization in older hospitalized patients. This intervention has been replicated and scaled up across various units and hospital settings.


Author(s):  
Philip B. Krause

This paper analyzes an experiment designed to demonstrate the effects of high intensity street lights on nighttime crime. The statistical methodology is developed around an interrupted time series design and illustrates the hazards that can arise if the serial dependence of successive observations is ignored.


1985 ◽  
Vol 18 (1) ◽  
pp. 123-136 ◽  
Author(s):  
YOUSSEF COHEN

The question posed in this article is whether the record of economic growth of Third World countries so far supports the claim that at a certain stage late industrialization is best served by bureaucratic-authoritarian regimes. A multiple interrupted time-series design is used to assess and compare the impact of bureaucratic-authoritarian and democratic regimes on economic growth in South America.


2021 ◽  
Vol 8 (1) ◽  
pp. 205395172110138
Author(s):  
Mark Green ◽  
Elena Musi ◽  
Francisco Rowe ◽  
Darren Charles ◽  
Frances Darlington Pollock ◽  
...  

COVID-19 is unique in that it is the first global pandemic occurring amidst a crowded information environment that has facilitated the proliferation of misinformation on social media. Dangerous misleading narratives have the potential to disrupt ‘official’ information sharing at major government announcements. Using an interrupted time-series design, we test the impact of the announcement of the first UK lockdown (8–8.30 p.m. 23 March 2020) on short-term trends of misinformation on Twitter. We utilise a novel dataset of all COVID-19-related social media posts on Twitter from the UK 48 hours before and 48 hours after the announcement (n = 2,531,888). We find that while the number of tweets increased immediately post announcement, there was no evidence of an increase in misinformation-related tweets. We found an increase in COVID-19-related bot activity post-announcement. Topic modelling of misinformation tweets revealed four distinct clusters: ‘government and policy’, ‘symptoms’, ‘pushing back against misinformation’ and ‘cures and treatments’.


2014 ◽  
Vol 13 (4) ◽  
pp. 727
Author(s):  
Roshni Narendran

The purpose of the study is to delineate the impact of national and industry-specific government interventions and the influence of political parties in power. The study employs an interrupted time series design from the annual national coir export data (1970-2012) published by the Coir Board. The study concludes by highlighting that the significance of economic environment has a greater impact on the trends of coir exports than industry-specific interventions. A seminal finding of this study is that there is a significant difference in the coir exports during the period of governance by the two political fronts in Kerala.


2021 ◽  
pp. 088626052110283
Author(s):  
Tyler J Lane

This study investigated whether homicides increased after protested police-involved deaths, focusing on the period after Michael Brown’s death in Ferguson in August 2014. It also tests for effects of legal cynicism by comparing effects in homicide and aggravated assault on the assumption that reporting of the latter is discretionary and police abuses may make communities reluctant to notify police. Using FBI data from 44 U.S. cities, homicide and assault rates from 2011 to 2019 were analyzed using an interrupted time series design and combined in a meta-analysis to calculate pooled effects. A meta-regression tested effect moderators including external investigations and city/county sociodemographic characteristics. With a conservative threshold of p ≤ .01, 21 of the 44 cities experienced a significant increase and one had a significant decrease. The pooled effect was a 26.1% increase in the homicide (99% CI: 15.3% to 36.8%). Aggravated assaults increased above baseline, though the effect was 15.2 percentage points smaller (99% CI: –26.7 to –3.6) than the effect in homicides. When outcomes were measured as percent change, there were no significant effect moderators, but when measured as absolute change, homicides increased to a greater extent when the death was subject to external investigation and in cities with higher Black populations, poverty rates, and baseline homicide rates. The findings suggest that protested police-involved deaths led to an increase in homicides and other violence due to the distrust fomented within the very communities whom police are meant to protect.


Author(s):  
Shuman Tan ◽  
Eun Sug Park ◽  
Jinuk Hwang

The Metropolitan Transit Authority of Harris County’s METROLift program implemented several revised fare policies on travel options available to eligible riders at the end of 2015 and the beginning of 2016. Fares changed on the METROLift paratransit single ticket and passes. A premium fare for the expanded service area and a smartcard—Freedom Q Card—that allows free ride on METRO’s fixed-route services were introduced. This paper documents analyses to determine the impact of the revised METROLift fare policies on travel patterns and travel frequency of METROLift riders. The authors used a linear segmented regression analysis to analyze data from an interrupted time series design. The results suggest that the revised fare policies controlled the growth of percentage of riders who use METROLift paratransit service in total ADA-eligible riders, while improved the awareness and willingness to use supplementary paratransit travel options, especially the fixed-route service in the base service area and the subsidy taxi service in the expanded service area.


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