The surge in COVID-19 hospitalizations among unvaccinated Americans in August added billions of dollars to estimates of preventable costs to the U.S. healthcare system, according to a new analysis from the Kaiser Family Foundation, writes Healthcare Dive. For the month of August, the preventable costs of treating unvaccinated patients totaled $3.7 billion for that month alone, researchers estimated. This was almost twice the total for June and July combined, and brings the total preventable costs for coronavirus-related hospitalizations among the unvaccinated population during those three months up to $5.7 billion.
More than 280,000 hospitalizations from COVID-19 could have been prevented by vaccination between June to August, researchers said.
Researchers used Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) data for estimates of new adult hospital admissions with confirmed COVID-19. They summed the previous day adult patient admissions across all days in each month (using variable: previous_day_admission_adult_covid_confirmed). They used CDC data on hospitalizations reported among people with COVID-19 vaccines for breakthrough hospitalizations to estimate the share of hospitalizations with a COVID-19 diagnosis that were among unvaccinated adults.
Read more:
- Healthcare Dive: https://www.healthcaredive.com/news/preventable-hospitalization-costs-among-unvaccinated-patients-surged-to-3/606522/
- Peterson-KFF Health System Tracker: Unvaccinated COVID-19 hospitalizations cost billions of dollars. September 14, 2021