Health care utilization after COVID-19 in persons with non-communicable diseases in Rio Grande, Rio Grande do Sul, Brazil

Abstract

The aim is to evaluate the health care utilization after COVID-19 in people with non-communicable diseases (NCDs) living in Rio Grande, Rio Grande do Sul, Brazil. We used data from the Sulcovid-19, a longitudinal study carried out with individuals who had COVID-19. Overall, 2,919 participants were asked if they attended any health care services after COVID-19 infection. We asked participants about medical diagnosis of systemic arterial hypertension (SAH), diabetes mellitus (DM), respiratory diseases (RD), and heart diseases (HD). We used poisson regression to assess the association between health care utilization and NCDs. Having a NCD was associated with an increased likelihood of using urgent and emergency services (prevalence ratio [PR] 1.67, 95%CI 1.33; 2.11). An increased use of specialized services (i.e., cardiologist) is highlighted among individuals with at least one NCD (PR 3.77, 95%CI 2.97; 4.80), SAH (PR 3.47, 95%CI 2.97; 4.31), and DM (PR 3.87, 95%CI 3.11; 4.81). People with NCDs required more health care services after COVID-19, regardless of their disease when compared to those without it.