Healthcare Disruption: Assessing COVID-19 Impact on Healthcare Delivery

A Master of Science thesis in Biomedical Engineering by Maymunah Ahmed Fatani entitled, “Healthcare Disruption: Assessing COVID-19 Impact on Healthcare Delivery”, submitted in December 2021. Thesis advisor is Dr. Abdulrahim Shamayleh. Soft copy is available (Thesis, Completion Certificate, Approval Signatures, and AUS Archives Consent Form).

Abstract

Health emergency outbreaks, including COVID-19 pandemic, make it challenging for the healthcare (HC) system to ration medical resources and care delivered to patients. Such disastrous events have been increasing in the past years and are becoming inevitable, necessitating the need for HC to be well-prepared and resilient to unpredictable rise in demand. Additionally, quantitative- and qualitative-based decision support systems increase the effectiveness of planning, alleviating uncertainties associated with the crisis. The purpose of this study is to understand how the COVID-19 pandemic has affected the performance of the healthcare system in different areas, and to address the pandemic-related disruption. A cross-sectional online survey was distributed among healthcare workers in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates, who worked during the pandemic, and have many years of experience in hospital settings (sample size = 123). The pandemic-related disruption, and its psychometric properties are assessed using Structural Equation Modeling with 30 items related to Staff Mental Health, Communication Level, Planning and Readiness, Healthcare Supply Chain, and Telehealth. Results show that the model satisfactorily fits the data, and that those factors are correlated among each other, providing a direction for more research focusing on determinants of the efficiency of healthcare delivery. The proposed work will provide decision-makers an insight into the main factors leading to disruptions in HC systems, and how they are correlated, allowing them to shape their outbreak response and better prepare for future health emergencies.