Changes in Healthcare Utilization up to 12 Months After COVID-19 Infection, 2026, Becker et al.

[Chandelier]

Changes in Healthcare Utilization up to 12 Months After COVID-19 Infection

Spoiler: Authors

Becker, Nora V.; Parent, Rachel; Iwashyna, Theodore J.; Ayanian, John Z.

Abstract​

Background​

COVID-19 infection may cause long-term changes in healthcare utilization, but heterogeneity in these changes by severity of COVID-19 infection in a national cohort is not well understood.

Objective​

Examine a broad set of utilization measures up to 12 months after COVID-19 infection, and assess heterogeneity in utilization by whether individuals were hospitalized for their initial infection.

Design​

Using the Merative Marketscan commercial and Medicare Advantage (MA) databases, we performed an event-study analysis comparing within-person changes in healthcare utilization after COVID-19 infection relative to before COVID-19 infection.
Models were stratified by hospitalization status, and controlled for temporal changes in utilization rates, linear pre-infection trends, and observable individual confounders.

Participants​

901,458 adults with a diagnosis of COVID-19 infection between March 1, 2020, and December 31, 2021, enrolled continuously for 12 months before and after their infection, of whom 54,097 were hospitalized and 847,361 were not hospitalized.

Main Measures​

Rates of admissions, emergency department (ED) visits, outpatient visits, physical therapy visits, home health services visits, and filled prescriptions for any medication.

Key Results​

Patients hospitalized for their COVID-19 infection experienced five months of elevated re-admission risk, small declines in ED visits during post-infection months 6–12, and large relative increases in post-infection utilization of all types of ambulatory care that persisted for 12 months after infection.
Patients not hospitalized for their COVID-19 infection experienced an elevated risk of admission for all post-infection months; no significant change in ED visits; small increases in outpatient visits, home health services use, and use of prescription medications; and small decreases in use of physical therapy.

Conclusions​

We found long-lasting changes in healthcare utilization after COVID-19 infection up to a year after infection, particularly among those with more severe illness, highlighting the importance of ongoing interventions to support the needs of COVID-19 survivors.

Web | DOI | PDF | Journal of General Internal Medicine | Open Access

 

[Peter T]

Presumably they did not get to the stage where people realised there was nothing to be gained from seeing a doctor or they got too ill to attend the surgery or outpatients. (Right I am generalising from anecdotes, but we do need data on how many people are being let down by medical provision and just give up seeking medical support.)

 

[Sean]

Presumably they did not get to the stage where people realised there was nothing to be gained from seeing a doctor or they got too ill to attend the surgery or outpatients. (Right I am generalising from anecdotes, but we do need data on how many people are being let down by medical provision and just give up seeking medical support.)

This is a very important and largely unaddressed factor.

 

[rvallee]

This is a very important and largely unaddressed factor.

Which is not an innocent oversight, as it's one of the most common complaints. It's almost impossible to be unaware of this, like actual living under a rock.

This is what's so damn frustrating, how established facts almost never matter. Almost all research and policies are done with a fake naivete that simply doesn't take them into consideration. Like how looking into how the implementation of the NICE guidelines never mentions the controversy and the open declarations from the professional associations that they don't care and won't comply. And it goes so much deeper, how it's widely acknowledged how deconditioning is obviously implausible as an explanation, and it's often acknowledged, but never when it actually matters.

There is this idea of science being better than this, that in fact it's mostly what makes it better. It's no surprise that we see massive failure being largely derived from this. This is how we end up with models used as standards despite decades of debunking.