Excess Patient Visits for Cough and Pulmonary Disease at a Large US Health System in the Months Prior to the COVID-19 Pandemic: Time-Series Analysis.

A significantly higher number of patients with respiratory complaints and diseases starting in late December 2019 and continuing through February 2020 suggests community spread of SARS-CoV-2 prior to established clinical awareness and testing capabilities. This provides a case example of how health system analytics combined with EHR data can provide powerful and agile tools for identifying when future trends in patient populations are outside of the expected ranges.