The analysis, based on the report, to the largest database of private health insurance claims in the United States, found 78,252 patients who were diagnosed with a U09.9 code from the International Classification of Diseases between October 1, 2021, and January. 31, 2022, and most of them were not hospitalized for their initial infection.
“It’s causing an epidemic of people who weren’t hospitalized, but who ended up with this increased disability,” said Dr. Paddy Sesantongo, assistant professor of infectious disease epidemiology at Penn State, who in the new study were not involved.”
Dr Claire Steves, a clinical academic and physician at King’s College London who was not involved in the new research, said the total number of people receiving a diagnosis was “huge”, especially noting that the study was only Covers the first four months after the diagnostic code was introduced and did not include people covered by government health programs such as Medicaid or Medicare (although it did include people in private Medicare Advantage plans). “It’s probably a drop in the ocean compared to the actual number,” Dr. Steves said.
The study by FAIR Health, a non-profit organization focusing on health care cost and insurance issues, found that for 76 percent of patients, the initial coronavirus infection did not make them sick enough to require hospitalization. Yet months later, they were experiencing symptoms that were diagnosed as a post-Covid condition.
Another startling finding was that while two-thirds of patients had pre-existing health conditions in their medical records, nearly a third did not, Dr. A much larger percentage than Sesantongo said they would have expected. “These are people who are healthy and they’re like, ‘Guys, nothing’s right with me,'” he said.
