• Vladimir Ratushny, Kevin Moore, and Daihung Do.
• Massachusetts Dermatology Associates, Beverly, Massachusetts.
• Dermatol Surg. 2021 Jul 1; 47 (7): 931-933.

BackgroundThe reallocation of health care resources to focus on the acute care needs of COVID-19 patients leads to a delay and deferral of outpatient surgical procedures such as Mohs surgery.ObjectivePlanning for the resumption of regular outpatient surgical care and preparing for future surges in COVID-19 cases requires identifying surrogate markers of health care demand.Materials And MethodsUnited States national and state-based Google search data for "Mohs surgery" and other common elective surgical and cosmetic procedures were evaluated. These were compared with national and state-wide COVID-19 case number and death data from the Johns Hopkins University. Pearson correlation coefficients were generated to assess the association between COVID-19 cases and deaths with Google search trends.ResultsSearch volume for "Mohs surgery" and other elective surgical and cosmetic procedures significantly decreased as the number of new deaths from COVID-19 increased. Statistically significant inverse correlation was noted between "Mohs surgery" search volume and new COVID-19 deaths on a national and state-based level.ConclusionSearch metric analysis may be used as part of a big data model to help predict health care demand during the reopening phase of the COVID-19 pandemic.Copyright © 2021 by the American Society for Dermatologic Surgery, Inc. Published by Wolters Kluwer Health, Inc. All rights reserved.

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