He also notes the study did not include patients without a postal code. Verma adds that relying on postal codes does have limitations in assessing socio-economic status since urban postal codes can have wide variation in their demographic.

Readmission was about the same regardless of neighbourhood, but patients from postal codes that scored high on the deprivation index were more likely to be admitted for COVID-19 to begin with, notes Verma. The study did not tease out how much socio-economic status itself was a factor, but did look at postal codes associated with so-called “deprivation” indicators like lower education and income among residents.

Amol Verma, an internal medicine physician at St. On its own, LACE had only a modest ability to predict readmission or death but adding variables including the patient’s neighbourhood and sex improved accuracy by 12 per cent, adds supporting co-author Dr. McAlister said knowing this could help transition co-ordinators and family doctors decide which patients need extra help when they leave the hospital. It comes back to the whole message that we’re seeing over and over with COVID: that socio-economic deprivation seems to be even more important for COVID than for other medical conditions.” “Including things like socio-economic status, male sex and where they were actually being discharged to were also big influences. McAlister also found socio-economic status was a factor, noting that hospitals traditionally use a scoring system called LACE to predict outcomes by looking at length of stay, age, comorbidities and past emergency room visits, but “that wasn’t as good a predictor for post-COVID patients.” They were also more likely to be discharged with home care or to a long-term care facility. The report found readmitted patients tended to be male, older, and have multiple comorbidities and previous hospital visits and admissions.

“So it looked like clinicians were identifying the right patients to send home.” Finlay McAlister, a professor of general internal medicine at the University of Alberta, said from Edmonton. and there was no association between length of stay in hospital and readmission rates, which is reassuring,” co-author Dr. “We initially wondered, ‘Were people being sent home too early?’. The combined rate of readmission or death was similar in each province, at 9.9 per cent or 783 patients in Alberta, and 10.6 per cent or 2,390 patients in Ontario.įor those wondering if the patients were discharged too soon, the report found most spent less than a month in hospital and patients who stayed longer were actually readmitted at a slightly higher rate. The deaths include patients who returned to hospital. About 18 per cent - 8,496 patients - died in hospital between January 2020 and October 2021, which was higher than the norm for other respiratory tract infections.Īmong those sent home, about nine per cent - 2,759 patients - returned to hospital within 30 days of leaving, while two per cent - 712 patients - died. Research published Monday in the Canadian Medical Association Journal looked at 46,412 adults hospitalized for COVID-19 in Alberta and Ontario during the first part of the pandemic.

A new study offers a closer look at possible factors that may lead some hospitalized COVID-19 patients to be readmitted within a month of discharge.Īt roughly nine per cent, researchers say the readmission rate is similar to that seen for other ailments, but socio-economic factors and sex seem to play a bigger role in predicting which patients are most likely to suffer a downturn when sent home.

Patient coming back to life