New disabilities, big bills follow COVID patients after short hospital stays, study says
COVID-19 patients are returning home with “substantially worse problems” after short hospital stays of just five days or less, researchers of a new study say.
A preliminary analysis of 253 patients of a cohort of 1,300 hospitalized with the disease between fall 2020 and early 2021 shows nearly 85% couldn’t get back to their pre-COVID lives one month after being discharged.
About half of them reported new limitations in daily activities, while nearly 55% of patients reported a new or worsened heart or lung symptom and 16% required breathing assistance with oxygen.
The early findings, published Wednesday in the Journal of Hospital Medicine, align with others on the lingering coronavirus symptoms some patients face long after their infection subsides, medically known as long COVID-19.
“This isn’t patients saying, ‘I can’t run quite as far as I used to’. This is them saying ‘I can’t walk, I can’t cook, I can’t shower’. The effects are devastating,” co-lead author Dr. C. Terri Hough, a professor of medicine and chief of the division of pulmonary and critical care medicine at Oregon Health & Science University, said in a statement. “Unfortunately, we saw this even among patients with quite short hospital stays.”
COVID-19 patients were also left with new or more “financial toxicities” after leaving the hospital.
About 20% lost their job or had to change it because of their hospital stay, about 38% had to ask a loved one to take time off of work to care for them, and about 23% emptied their savings account to afford medical bills.
The reported issues don’t seem to be related to age or health status, the researchers say. On average, people included in the study were 60 years old and relatively healthy before developing COVID-19.
So far, the largest burden coronavirus patients face after hospital discharge, no matter the duration, is a lack of follow-up health care services; 77% of patients dealing with a new disability reported not receiving proper home care after hospitalization.
“Somewhere the ball is being dropped. One month later, these patients need services and are not getting them,” said study co-lead author Theodore “Jack” Iwashyna of the Department of Internal Medicine at the University of Michigan.
The team said its study, once complete, could help doctors find treatments to reduce the burdens of COVID-19 recovery.
This story was originally published August 20, 2021 at 2:24 PM with the headline "New disabilities, big bills follow COVID patients after short hospital stays, study says."
