PINC AI™ Data Ties Acute Kidney Injury and Increased Costs to One-third of Hospitalized COVID-19 Patients

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While the impact of COVID-19 on the respiratory system of infected patients is well known, research shows that impact on the kidneys can be just as concerning. Acute Kidney Injury (AKI), an abrupt decrease in kidney function that frequently affects hospitalized patients and has been associated with higher mortality, is also frequent among hospitalized COVID-19 patients. However, little is known about the actual impact of AKI on healthcare resource utilization and costs among hospitalized patients with COVID-19.

There is an urgent need to understand the clinical and economic consequences associated with AKI in hospitalized patients with COVID-19 to better inform treatment decisions and healthcare resource allocation.

Research collaboration between bioMérieux and PINC AI™ Applied Sciences (PAS), an instrumental part of the Premier’s technology and services platform, PINC AI™.

bioMérieux, a global leader in in vitro diagnostics, joined forces with PINC AI™ Applied Sciences (PAS), the research and analytics division of Premier. Using the PINC AI™ Healthcare Database (PHD), they pinpointed real-world evidence on the consequences of AKI in hospitalized COVID-19 patients.

The Premier-bioMérieux Research Study

The Research team selected the PHD, based on the breadth and depth of patient data, as the data source for its retrospective real-world cohort study aimed to compare characteristics, clinical outcomes, healthcare resource utilization (HRU) and costs for hospitalized U.S. COVID-19 patients aged ≥ 18 years, with and without AKI during their initial hospitalization. The study time took place between April 1 and Oct. 31, 2020, with 30-day follow-up outcomes and 365-day lookback for comorbidities.

Researchers found:

• Among 208,583 hospitalized patients with COVID-19, approximately 1 out of 3 patients had AKI during their hospitalization, or (1 out of 2 among COVID-19 patients admitted to the ICU).
• COVID-19 patients with AKI were 3.7 times more likely to be admitted to the ICU during their hospitalization than COVID-19 patients without AKI.
• COVID-19 patients with AKI had more than five times higher odds of death, approximately 50 percent longer length of stay (LOS) and almost doubled mean costs (more than $20,000) during their initial hospitalization, compared with those without AKI.
• Finally, among patients who were discharged alive without having dialysis, AKI was associated with 2.7 times higher odds of having dialysis during the subsequent 30 days after the initial hospitalization.

The results of this study, presented at the European Society of Intensive Medicine’s (ESICM) annual conference, LIVES on Oct. 4 and referenced here on page 2, support the implementation of preventive measures to decrease the incidence of AKI among hospitalized COVID-19 patients and reduce the utilization of costly resources such as dialysis and the ICU.

Robust Data at Researchers Fingertips

PINC AI Applied Sciences partners with life sciences, academia, government agencies, and healthcare insurers and providers, enabling them with robust PHD data for real-world applied research and analytics, science implementation and prospective research and clinical trials that help inform evidence-based practices and improve quality, safety and cost-effectiveness of care.

The PHD comprises more than 20 years of de-identified data from over 1,030 hospitals spanning multiple therapeutic areas and quality improvement areas. Currently, the PHD contains data from more than 1 billion inpatient and hospital-based outpatient encounters.

In addition to the standardized data contained in the PHD, the PAS team developed a Special Release of the PHD (PHD-SR) to help drive COVID-19 research. The PHD-SR has shortened the data lag time from five months to two weeks, making it the ideal source of data for studying the disease. Today, the PHD-SR contains real-world data representing more than 2.4 million inpatient and hospital-based outpatient encounters with a COVID-19 diagnosis.

Learn More: Discover how the PHD has fueled leading COVID-19 research conducted by the PAS research team, Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the National Institutes of Health and others.

Find out more about the capabilities of the PHD as they relate to COVID-19 data.

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