Health Care Resource Use and Total Mortality After Hospital Admission for Severe COVID-19 Infections During the Initial Pandemic Wave in France: Descriptive Study

Little is known about post-hospital health care resource use (HRU) of patients admitted for severe COVID-19, specifically for the care of patients with postacute COVID-19 syndrome (PACS). A list of HRU domains and items potentially related to PACS was defined, and potential PACS-related HRU (PPRH) was compared between the pre- and post-COVID-19 periods, to identify new outpatient care likely related to PACS. A retrospective cohort study was conducted with the French National Health System claims data (SNDS). All patients hospitalized for COVID-19 between February 1, 2020, and June 30, 2020 were described and investigated for 6 months, using discharge date as index date. Patients who died during index stay or within 30 days after discharge were excluded. PPRH was assessed over the 5 months from day 31 after index date to end of follow-up, that is, for the post-COVID-19 period. For each patient, a pre-COVID-19 period was defined that covered the same calendar time in 2019, and pre-COVID-19 PPRH was assessed. Post- or pre- ratios (PP ratios) of the percentage of users were computed with their 95% CIs, and PP ratios>1.2 were considered as "major HRU change." The final study population included 68,822 patients (median age 64.8 years, 47% women, median follow-up duration 179.3 days). Altogether, 23% of the patients admitted due to severe COVID-19 died during the hospital stay or within the 6 months following discharge. A total of 8 HRU domains were selected to study PPRH: medical visits, technical procedures, dispensed medications, biological analyses, oxygen therapy, rehabilitation, rehospitalizations, and nurse visits. PPRs showed novel outpatient care in all domains and in most items, without specificity, with the highest ratios observed for the care of thoracic conditions. Patients hospitalized for severe COVID-19 during the initial pandemic wave had high morbi-mortality. The analysis of HRU domains and items most likely to be related to PACS showed that new care was commonly initiated after discharge but with no specificity, potentially suggesting that any impact of PACS was part of the overall high HRU of this population after hospital discharge. These purely descriptive results need to be completed with methods for controlling for confusion bias through subgroup analyses. ClinicalTrials.gov NCT05073328; https://clinicaltrials.gov/ct2/show/NCT05073328.