High rates of COVID-19 in the county where a hospital is located appears to reduce survival rates among hospitalized patients with the virus, according to a new study from researchers in the [University of Pennsylvania] Perelman School of Medicine and at UnitedHealth Group. These findings were published in JAMA Internal Medicine.
“We have known that individual risk factors like age and gender, comorbidities such as obesity, and whether someone is a nursing home resident, are all part of what determines whether patients have a good or bad outcome. But our research shows it also matters where a patient is admitted,” says lead investigator David Asch, director of the Center for Health Care Innovation and a professor of medicine at Penn.