Cancellation and resumption of elective surgeries over time across a national sample of US hospitals during the COVID-19 pandemic

Early in the COVID-19 pandemic, many US hospitals responded to surges in demand for intensive care by canceling elective surgeries. Intended to free up resources (eg, ICU beds, personnel) for critically ill patients with pandemic-related illness, these policies also posed risks of patient harm because of delayed care and lost hospital revenue. A better understanding of the decision-making underlying surgery cancellation could inform future policies enacted to respond to surges of critical illness. Therefore, we sought to describe the timing of elective surgery cancellation during the pandemic and to test the hypothesis that decisions to cancel elective surgeries were made independently of local disease burden.

National Health, Lung, and Blood Institute
VA Portland Health Care System
VA Ann Arbor Health Care System

Kelly C Vranas, Deena Kelly Costa, Billie S Davis, Andrew J Admon, Bo Zhao, Jeremy M Kahn, Meeta Prasad Kerlin