The COVID-19 pandemic has brought uncertainty to everyday medical practice. Deciding how to ration limited healthcare resources is difficult and requires the involvement of higher authorities in each country. In this article we focus on the Jordanian strategy of allocating tertiary healthcare centers exclusively for COVID-19 patients and postponing all other treatments and healthcare provision. We collected secondary data on admissions, occupancy of hospital beds, and length of stay at emergency departments and outpatient clinics, as well as surgeries conducted, between March and May 2020 at King Abdullah University Hospital in Irbid, Jordan. We also conducted a literature review to explore health resource utilization and allocation in terms of health service quality. Our findings showed a major decrease in the demand for health services at the hospital including admissions, emergency department visits, outpatient clinic visits, surgeries, and radiology during the study period. These findings indicate the enormous impact of the pandemic on the largest segment of patients in Jordan-those who depend on government health insurance-to manage their routine healthcare needs, which may affect the health status of patients. Authorities should address the COVID-19 pandemic holistically by prioritizing both COVID-19 cases and non-COVID-19 cases and should draft a framework for managing future pandemics. Moreover, planning a strategy to accommodate the number of people waiting for elective surgeries and routine healthcare should be in place to minimize the burden of this pandemic.
Keywords: COVID-19; Emergency medicine; Epidemic management/response; Hospital preparedness/response; Inequity; Principle of justice.