Analysis of Hospital Resource Availability and COVID-19 Mortality Across the United States

Abstract

While the impact of coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) has varied greatly across the United States, there has been little assessment of hospital resources and mortality. We examine hospital resources and death counts among hospital referral regions (HRRs) from March 1 to July 26, 2020. This was an analysis of American Hospital Association data with COVID-19 data from the New York Times. Hospital-based resource availabilities were characterized per COVID-19 case. Death count was defined by monthly confirmed COVID-19 deaths. Geographic areas with fewer intensive care unit (ICU) beds (incident rate ratio [IRR], 0.194; 95% CI, 0.076-0.491), nurses (IRR, 0.927; 95% CI, 0.888-0.967), and general medicine/surgical beds (IRR, 0.800; 95% CI, 0.696-0.920) per COVID-19 case were statistically significantly associated with greater deaths in April. This underscores the potential impact of innovative hospital capacity protocols and care models to create resource flexibility to limit system overload early in a pandemic.