A new study has shown that people with Long COVID use the health service significantly more than they did before their diagnosis. These patients need to use GP, outpatient, inpatient and emergency department services more than people in other control groups – and the costs of their healthcare use have more than doubled.
Using data accessed via the BHF Data Science Centre‘s CVD-COVID-UK/COVID-IMPACT Consortium, research has found this has serious implications for health service resourcing, globally. Long COVID affects 1.9 million people in the UK, and at least 65 million individuals worldwide are estimated to have had Long COVID after the first pandemic wave.
Researchers analysed how 280,000 people with Long COVID use healthcare services in the UK. They found that people with Long COVID have health service needs costing a median of £705, annually. Before being diagnosed with Long COVID, those same people had median annual NHS costs of £294.
For comparison, the study looked at various control groups. This included over a million people with COVID – but not Long COVID. These people had median healthcare costs of £447 per year.
Of all the people considered, those with Long COVID had the highest hospitalisation rates over two years. Annually, individuals with Long COVID had more GP consultations (a median of 9.90) and outpatient appointments (a median of 1.07) per person than all control groups. The analysis showed that people with Long COVID had higher emergency department attendance than all control groups, and significantly higher inpatient admissions than all but one control group.
Long COVID is so costly for the health service – and so incapacitating for patients – because it’s a complex condition affecting multiple organs. These are probably caused by multiple underlying mechanisms. And while there has been scientific progress, this new syndrome is still not fully defined.
Dr Yi Mu from the Institute of Health Informatics at University College London, one of the study authors, said “Long COVID is a debilitating disease for patients, presenting in a myriad of ways, with far-reaching implications for those affected. In this context, it is understandable that the people with Long COVID have complex healthcare needs and access services significantly more than others.
“Health systems have been under strain from the impact of Long COVID, stretching staff and infrastructure. Our study has quantified that cost, finding that people with Long COVID have healthcare service needs extending to GP, outpatient, inpatient and emergency departments, and that annually the median cost of this per person is more than double what it was before contracting COVID.”
Dr Ashkan Dashtban from the Institute of Health Informatics, University College London, another author on the study, said “Government and policy makers must take immediate action. The treatment and prevention of Long COVID must be prioritised in research, practice and policy.”
