Impact of COVID-19 pandemic healthcare restrictions on utilisation and diagnostic yield of outpatient transthoracic echocardiograms.

Background: During the COVID-19 pandemic, Kentucky prohibited elective medical procedures from 3/18/2020-4/27/2020. We sought to determine if cessation of elective procedures in Kentucky during the COVID-19 pandemic resulted in a decrease in the proportion of rarely appropriate outpatient transthoracic echocardiograms interpreted at the open echocardiography lab at Norton Children's Hospital.

Methods: A retrospective chart review was conducted comparing proportions of rarely appropriate outpatient paediatric transthoracic echocardiograms performed pre-COVID (3/21/2019-4/28/2019) and during COVID (3/19/2020-4/27/2020).

Recurrent Antibiotic Use in Kentucky Children With 6 Years of Continuous Medicaid Enrollment.

Background: Little is known about the distribution of antibiotic use in individual children over time. The amoxicillin index is a recently proposed metric to assess first-line antibiotic prescribing to children.

Methods: We constructed a cohort of continuously enrolled Medicaid children using enrollment claims from 2012 to 2017.