2021 ASM / R-0330
Maintenance of radiation oncology services in Australia during the COVID-19 pandemic
Keywords:
Oncology, RIS, Radiation therapy / Oncology, Radiotherapy techniques
Authors:
S. Sreedharan, M. Mian; Melbourne, VIC/AU
DOI:
10.26044/ranzcr2021/R-0330
Methods and materials
- Monthly data was extracted from the Australian Medicare Benefits Schedule database (Category 3 – Group T2) for all therapeutic radiation oncology services performed between January 2017 and December 2019 [6].
- An additive triple exponential smoothing model was developed for total therapeutic radiation oncology services, accounting for trend over time and seasonality.
- The model was built using monthly data between January 2017 and December 2019 to predict monthly data between January 2020 and December 2020 with a 95% confidence interval (p<0.05).
- Observed monthly services between January 2020 and December 2020 were compared with predicted monthly services over the same time period to calculate absolute and percentage differences.
- All statistical analyses were performed using SPSS version 22 (IBM SPSS, Amronk, NY, USA) and LKS-CHART Forecasting Tool (St. Michael’s Hospital, Toronto, ON, Canada).