Abstract:

Up to the date of the study, approximately 6.4 million people worldwide died due to Covid-19. In this process, individuals changed their daily life routines due to reasons such as the high contagiousness of the disease, the high number of deaths and the increasing rate of the disease, and ignorance about the disease. Even in periods when there were no restrictions or prohibitions, individuals did not continue their behavior under normal conditions. One of these changes has emerged in the health service demands of individuals. After the onset of the disease, hospital admission rates decreased significantly. In this context, the study aims to analyze the change in people's health care demands during the Covid-19 Pandemic period. Archival data of the number of patient admissions from the secondary and tertiary health institutions in the center of Sivas between 01.09.2019 - 11.03.2021 was used and the changes in the health demand according to gender, age, health insurance/payment, and the departments were analyzed periodically. In the period September 2020 - March 2021, total hospital admissions (excluding suspected Covid-19 and departments requiring mandatory treatment such as oncology, etc…) were approximately 46% lower than the total number of hospital admissions between September 2019 - March 2020. When the "child emergency" applications are evaluated for the same periods, a decrease of 66% can be seen. Such a significant decrease causes us to question the rational behavior of individuals in health care demands under normal conditions. If it is thought that it is not rational behavior, important steps should be taken about the use of healthcare services by individuals. The education of individuals on this issue plays a key role.

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