Changes in the availability of medical care to patients with chronic non-infectious diseases during the COVID-19 pandemic: A literature review

Abstract

The coronavirus pandemic has caused adjustments to be made to the organization of medical care for the population worldwide. The reorganization of medical institutions to provide emergency, outpatient, and inpatient medical care to infected patients required huge financial and personnel costs and caused a kind of bias towards reducing the medical services provided to patients with chronic non-infectious diseases, which in turn determine the main levels of morbidity, premature mortality, and disability of the population. The availability of medical care to patients with chronic non-infectious diseases has decreased in all the countries that were impacted by COVID-19. This situation has not gone unnoticed by the medical community and as a result, various ways to overcome this problem have been proposed. The proposed article presents an analytical review of various types of Russian and foreign medical sources including articles, orders, statements, interviews, and surveys devoted to the problem of addressing the availability of various types of medical care. The review presents the most obvious and widespread problems in public health during the pandemic. It also analyzes the methods used in various countries, including Russia, to overcome the decline in the availability of medical care. The wide range of problems described that arose in domestic and foreign healthcare during the COVID-19 pandemic, and the variety of ways to solve them, allow us to conclude that this study is relevant. A literary review of articles (reviews, original research, interview data, and telephone surveys) published from March 2020 to March 2022 was conducted on the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on the availability of medical care for somatic patients in the Russian Federation and several foreign countries. The methods of bibliographic, informational and semantic search for sources in Google Scholar, PubMed and Scopus databases were used. A system analysis of the sources was performed.