Hospital-acquired COVID-19 is associated with increased length and cost of stay in an Australian health care setting.

Abstract

The effect of hospital-acquired COVID-19 (HAI-COVID) on length- and cost- of hospital stay is incompletely understood. We performed a propensity-score matched, case-control study comparing inpatients with HAI-COVID versus non-HAI-COVID. For HAI-COVID, both length (15.0 vs 6.0 days) and cost (AUD$25,984 vs AUD$13,454) of stay were significantly increased (P<.001). Multistate modeling correcting for time-dependency bias demonstrated increased LOS of 4.6 days (95% CI 3.5-5.8 days). Minimizing HAI-COVID will lead to better patient and institutional outcomes.