Abstract
The coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic has spread across the globe and impacted everyone, everywhere. Despite COVID-19’s negative impact in several aspects, this pandemic has created an opportunity for researchers to explore new research questions and approaches to the challenging situation which the world is facing with the overall aim to support our communities. The purpose of this study was to address policy-relevant questions arising from the COVID-19 pandemic by investigating the impact of COVID-19 on outpatient (OPD) and inpatient (IPD) service utilization, ambulatory care sensitive conditions (ACSCs), mental health, low-value care (LVC), and mortality. Literature reviews and analyses of real world data from existing administrative databases were used to achieve the overall goal of creating evidence to support the healthcare system in Thailand. In conclusion, this study can consider to be the first study that use real-world data from existing administrative databases to address policy questions. The study delivers outputs on two main areas: 1) answering policy-related questions; and 2) raising new topics for future research based on the study results. This study seeks to turn a crisis into an opportunity and our research team hope that it will help spark and create a foundation for many further studies.
