Inpatient flow for COVID-19 in the Brazilian health regions

Abstract

Objective: To investigate the flows of hospitalizations for COVID-19 in the 450 regions and 117 Brazilian health macro-regions between March and October 2020. Method: Descriptive study, comprising all hospitalizations due to COVID-19 registered in the Flu Epidemiological Surveillance Information System (SIVEP-Gripe) between the 8th and 44th epidemiological weeks of 2020. The proportion of hospitalizations for COVID-19 occurred within same health region of residency was calculated, stratified according to periods of greater and lesser demand for health care, according to the population size of health regions. The indicator of migratory efficacy was calculated, which takes into account the evasion and invasion of patients, by crossing the data of origin of the patients (health region of residence) with the data of the place of hospitalization (health region of attendance). Results: 397,830 admissions were identified for COVID-19 in the period. Evasion was 11.9% of residents in health regions and 6.8% in macro-regions, pattern that was maintained during the peak period of hospitalizations for COVID-19. There was an average of 17.6% of evasion of residents of health regions in the Northeast and of 8.8% in health regions of the South. Evasion was more accentuated in health regions with up to 100 thousand / inhabitants (36.9%), which was 7 times greater than that observed in health regions with more than 2 million / inhabitants (5.2%). The negative migratory efficacy indicator (-0.39) indicated a predominance of evasion. Of the 450 Brazilian health regions, 117 (39.3%) had a coefficient of migratory efficacy between -1 and -0.75 and 113 (25.1%) between -0.75 and -0.25. Conclusion: The results indicate that the regionalization of the health system proved to be adequate in the organization of care in the territory, however the long distances traveled are still worrying.