Variation in US Hospital Mortality Rates for Patients Admitted With COVID-19 During the First 6 Months of the Pandemic

Abstract

One year after identifying the first cases of coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) in Wuhan, China, we have little understanding of how mortality rates vary by hospital or whether mortality rates are improving. Hospital-level mortality may depend not just on patient risk factors, but also on the hospital where patients are admitted. Individual-level and hospital-level mortality rates are also likely to improve over time with increasing experience with the disease and as new treatments become available. We used data from a large national health insurer in the US to estimate the variation in hospital-level mortality among patients hospitalized with COVID-19 to examine how mortality rates changed and identify hospital-level characteristics that were associated with those mortality rates and their change.