Alliance for Pandemic Preparedness

December 23, 2020

Variation in US Hospital Mortality Rates for Patients Admitted With COVID-19 During the First 6 Months of the Pandemic

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COVID-19 mortality rates in the US declined among hospitalized patients over the first few months of the pandemic with better outcomes associated with low community prevalence of COVID-19, according to a retrospective cohort analysis. The authors constructed a cohort of 38,517 adults from a deidentified administrative database in patients admitted with COVID-19 from January 1 and June 30, 2020. They then calculated a risk-standardized event rate (RSER) for each hospital from a combination of 30-day in-hospital mortality and referral to hospice, adjusting for patient-level characteristics. They found that RSERs declined for almost all 955 hospitals in the dataset, but that large differences in RSERs between hospitals persisted and increased community burden was associated with increased RSER. The authors warn that hospital mortality outcomes may worsen as community burden of COVID-19 increases over the winter.

Asch et al. (Dec 22, 2020). Variation in US Hospital Mortality Rates for Patients Admitted With COVID-19 During the First 6 Months of the Pandemic. JAMA Internal Medicine. https://doi.org/10.1001/jamainternmed.2020.8193