Assessing the influence of COVID-19 pandemic on thirty days readmission rate based on patient’s demographics, substance use, and insurance

Providing the highest quality care with no biases is the goal of every healthcare system. As a part of that goal hospital readmission has been investigated due to its impact on healthcare cost and case fatality rate in patient outcome. Patient's demographics, substance use and insurance barriers have been investigated as factors for readmission rate but the impact of COVID-19 pandemic on those biases and barriers have not been studied extensively yet. In our retrospective cross-sectional study, we placed the scope on readmission rate with the intention to investigate any relation with patient's demographics including ethnicity, gender, language, substance use and insurance barriers and if there has been any change in the area pre and post COVID-19 pandemic. Total of 1713 readmitted patients were identified and split into 893 pre-COVID-19 and 820 post COVID-19 pandemic. Our multivariable analysis showed that the rate of readmissions during the COVID-19 pandemic was statistically higher among substance users (<i>p</i> = 0.003) and Medicaid insured (<i>p</i> = 0.038), and less likely among Spanish speakers <i>p</i> = 0.003. This study is limited due to small sample size and does not accurately represent the full population of the United States. Our hope is to further investigate the impact of COVID-19 pandemic on the readmission rate and to identify any influencing factors, biases, and barriers that contributed to the increased rate of readmission to learn and avoid future readmissions during straining times in medicine such as during COVID-19 pandemic.