Temporal Variations in the Intensity of Care Provided to Community and Nursing Home Residents Who Died of COVID-19 in Ontario, Canada

ABSTRACT

Introduction - Worldwide, nursing home residents have experienced disproportionately high COVID-19 mortality due to the intersection of congregate living, multimorbidity, and advanced age. Among 12 OECD countries, Canada has had the highest proportion of COVID-19 deaths in nursing home residents (78%), raising concerns about a skewed pandemic response that averted much transmission and mortality in community-dwelling residents, but did not adequately protect those in nursing homes. To investigate this, we measured temporal variations in hospitalizations among community and nursing home-dwelling decedents with COVID-19 during the first and second waves of the pandemic. Methods - We conducted a population-based cohort study of residents of Ontario, Canada with COVID-19 who died between March 11, 2020 (first COVID-19 death in Ontario) and October 28, 2020. We examined hospitalization prior to death as a function of 4 factors community (defined as all non-nursing home residents) vs. nursing home residence, age in years (<70, 70-79, 80-89, [≥]90), gender, and month of death (1st wave March-April [peak], May, June-July 2020 [nadir], 2nd wave August-October 2020). Results - A total of 3,114 people with confirmed COVID-19 died in Ontario from March to October, 2020 (Table 1), of whom 1,354 (43.5%) were hospitalized prior to death (median 9 days before death, interquartile range 4-19). Among nursing home decedents (N=2000), 22.4% were admitted to hospital prior to death, but this varied substantially from a low of 15.5% in March-April (peak of wave 1) to a high of 41.2% in June-July (nadir of wave 1). Among community-dwelling decedents (N=1,114), admission to acute care was higher (81.4%) and remained relatively stable throughout the first and second waves. Similar temporal trends for nursing home versus community decedents were apparent in age-stratified analyses (Figure 1). Women who died were less likely to have been hospitalized compared to men in both community (80% women vs 84% men) and nursing home (21% women vs 24% men) settings. Discussion - Only a minority of Ontario nursing home residents who died of COVID-19 were hospitalized prior to death, and that there were substantial temporal variations, with hospitalizations reaching their lowest point when overall COVID-19 incidence peaked in mid-April, 2020. While many nursing home residents had pre-pandemic advance directives precluding hospitalization, the low admission rate observed in March-April 2020 (15.5%) was inconsistent with both higher admission rates in subsequent months (>30%), and comparatively stable rates among community-dwelling adults. Our findings substantiate reports suggesting that hospitalizations for nursing home residents with COVID-19 were low during the peak of the pandemics first wave in Canada, which may have contributed to the particularly high concentration of COVID-19 mortality in Ontarios nursing homes.