Variation in complexity weight values for heart failure admissions: the impact of COVID-19 situation

Abstract Funding Acknowledgements Type of funding sources: None. Background COVID-19 outbreak nudged worldwide health systems to reallocate resources from from other areas to help fighting against this novel infectious disease. Consequently, accuracy and quality care of cardiovascular patients was partially compromised. Moreover, fear to get to hospital made patients to stay home despite the presence of symptoms that would have led them to search medical aid in other scenarios. Aim We aimed to demonstrate that heart failure admissions after the outbreak were more complex in term of coding compared to those previous to pandemic situation. Methods We analyzed complexity coding weight parameters (according to current Spanish Coding manual CIE-10)obtained from local healthcare authorities of 1479 admissions from Balearic Islands Region from January 2019 to December 2021. Admissions with higher coding value were considered more complex. We performed an interrupted time series using pre pandemic admissions as a control group. Results 2020 showed a lower number of admissions (468), specially form March to June compared to 2019 (499) and 2021. Coding weight values, trend and comparison are showed in figures. Conclusions Number of heart failure admissions were reduced in 2020, being it complexity mildly higher compared to 2019 and 2021. Further analysis with data from other regions would be useful to confirm this trend in the whole country.