Assignment group (2)

Submitted by:
Manar Fekry
Marwa Mohasseb
Taghreed Medhat

Submitted to:
Prof. Miran Hussein

Submitted at:
Date: 13-9-2021

MQM-Shebin EL-Kom-3
Broad topic: healthcare service quality during COVID-19 lockdown
Problem statement: healthcare service accessibility is affected by the COVID-19
lockdown
Research objectives: to determine the relationship between COVID-19 lockdown
and the healthcare service accessibility
Critical literature review:
The COVID-19 pandemic is an important global hazard to public health and
challenges the delivery and accessibility of healthcare services. It even affects nations
where there is a great deal of healthcare, cutting-edge technologies and a decent
quantity of healthcare workers. Consequently, everybody has had to adjust their
systems, regardless of nation or continent, to prompt access and discover the best
approach to respond to this infection.
Access to health care refers to how easily people can get the medical treatment they
need. The chance to employ adequate services according to the demands of health
care is commonly defined. If services are accessible, then medical treatment is
provided; but, other obstacles, such as financial, corporate, social, cultural, etc., are
restricted too. The amount of access in this sense affects the usage of medical
services, thus population health status. Prior to the epidemic, access was an issue. As
of now, the population of COVID-19 impacted by decreasing access to and use of
health services shows early proofs of racial or socio-economic inequalities. This has
amplified the social advantages of the system, therefore making insufficient or
inaccessible access to health care services more straining the system.

A large number of resources and personnel are dedicated to test and treat cases of
COVID-19. Supplies and individuals are afraid of accessing providers of healthcare
are limited. Today, the public is also beginning to dread the consequences of the
vaccination COVID-19. Therefore, access to medical care in situations that are
already poor in health systems must be ensured in order to avoid diseases and
fatalities from COVID‐19 and non-COVID-19. In order to reduce impacts and spread
of COVID-20, it is necessary to strengthen tactics and to create proactive measures to
prevent disruptions to access to health care.

Reduced access, along with fear of virus exposure to treatment, surgery and other
hospital services led to large access decreases. Through telemedicine, several
symptomatic illnesses have been treated. As a viable method for maintaining patient
care and reducing the danger of exposure to COVID-19 patients, health professionals
and the public, telemedicine has emerged. There is proof that telemedicine has been
used to assist evaluate, diagnose, triage and treat patients with COVID-19, while
preventing an emergency and an ambulatory. There is also evidence that telemedicine
has been handled and has expressed pleasure with received services. These
experiences include transplanted kidney patients, diabetes, prenatal care, eye disease,
couples and family treatments, colorectal operation, cancer, among others. These
approaches underline the possibilities offered by telemedicine to continuously
monitor complicated patients now and beyond. However, some hurdles have been
identified: telemedicine will not replace face to face contacts entirely, and
governments must address increasing concerns about privacy, regulation and
insurance coverage. More study is also needed to evaluate its effectiveness and
quality of treatment it provides

The health hazard from the virus also affects the vulnerable, i.e. disabled individuals,
travellers, homeless persons, etc. These categories of individuals presumably already
have disadvantage and have no access to telemedicine, since they have been
exacerbated by the epidemic. Proactive vulnerable methods to meet their particular
requirements need to be created. Furthermore, the pandemic has had significant
impacts on mental health, which have worsened mental anguish at all ages. This
particularly happens now that the tight restrictions established to prevent the spread of
the virus have had a major impact on the local businesses. This has resulted in
isolation and increased unemployment rates and also affected insurance coverages

Variables:
- The dependent variable is healthcare service accessibility
- The independent variable is the COVID-19 lockdown
- Intervening variables:
i. more physicians are infected, and their work productivity is lost
ii. the closure of the outpatient clinics and limitation of the pharmacy
activities
Hypothesis: there is no relation between the access of healthcare services and the
COVID-19 lockdown