Patient adverse financial outcomes before and after COVID-19 infection

Adverse financial outcomes after COVID-19 infection and hospitalization have not been assessed with appropriate comparators to account for other financial disruptions of 2020–2021. Using credit report data from 132,109 commercially insured COVID-19 survivors, we compared the rates of adverse financial outcomes for two cohorts of individuals with credit outcomes measured before and after COVID-19 infection, using an interaction term between cohort and hospitalization to test whether adverse credit outcomes changed more for hospitalized than nonhospitalized COVID-19 patients. Covariates included age group, gender, and several area-level social determinants of health. Adverse financial outcomes were significantly more common after COVID-19 infection than before COVID-19 infection, with greater increases among those hospitalized with COVID-19 (5–8 percentage points) than among nonhospitalized patients (1–3 percentage points). Future work examining longitudinal financial outcomes before and after COVID-19 infection is needed to determine the causal mechanisms of this association to reduce financial hardship from COVID-19 and other conditions.