11% of hospitalized COVID-19 patients get readmitted or die, study shows

Researchers have found that for people who were hospitalized with COVID-19, death or readmission was common, with about 11 per cent being readmitted or dying within 30 days.

After examining records of more than 800,000 Canadian COVID-19 patients, researchers at the University of Alberta found death or readmission to be quite common among those infected with the virus.

In a study published on May 16 in the Canadian Medical Association Journal (CMAJ), the researchers said that this could happen to about 11 per cent of patients within 30 days.

“(The percentage) initially sounds high, but it’s actually about what we see for patients who are discharged from general medical units with pneumonia or influenza, who have a lot of other illnesses like diabetes,” Finlay McAlister, lead author and professor of medicine at the University of Alberta, told Global News’s Su-Ling Goh in a zoom interview.

According to the study, patients who died were older, with data showing that they were over 55, with multiple underlying health conditions, and were more likely to be male. They were also discharged with home care or to a long-term care facility, and had more previous hospitalizations and emergency department visits.

“It’s just the underlying disease process gets worse or the transition back to home doesn’t work very well…maybe there are not enough services at home or patients are more frail than was recognized either by the patient or the clinical staff. And the patients tend to be readmitted to hospital,” he said.

Hospital readmissions after COVID-19 are common and costly, according to the study. As a result, McAlister said knowing the readmission rate after COVID-19 hospitalization and the reasons why people end up back in hospital can help with health-care planning.

“Identifying risk factors for early readmission or death is important for doctors caring for patients and also for system planners trying to decide which patients need extra resources at discharge,” said McAlister in a press release.

Researchers looked at data on all adults hospitalized in Alberta and Ontario — the two provinces that make up half the population in Canada — due to COVID-19 between January 1, 2020, and September 30, 2021.