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Heartbeat: COVID-19 BAME deaths analysis

August 1, 2020

The COVID-19 pandemic has required a rapid change in pathways for our patients. At the start of the pandemic we set out to treat our patients with the same care and kindness that we pride ourselves on delivering, and that has not changed. Our approach to providing best practice and reviewing mortality of cases is discussed at our public board meeting every month and we have been open about our data and have shared it, in the hope of sharing learning.

The main questions we consider are:

  • How our care pathways have compared to best practice?
  • How our outcomes compare to neighbouring providers and why?
  • How well all populations served by the Trust have been treated with COVID-19 to date, and anything we need to change in the coming months?

Our Learning from Deaths team has undertaken, alongside medical examiners and clinical colleagues, a review of the higher number of deaths than normal due to COVID-19 deaths. Dr David Carruthers, Medical Director, explained: “We consider every patient lost to COVID-19 a tragedy. Since the pandemic took hold in the middle of March, we have identified through our data that age, gender, hypertension and diabetes are a risk factor in the outcome, with 67 per cent of patients who died of COVID-19 suffering hypertension whilst 44 per cent had diabetes. This is in line with national data which confirmed that patients with both Type 1 and Type 2 diabetes had significantly more risk of mortality compared to the general population. Other contributory factors include poor diabetes control and obesity.

“Early on, we saw a trend of more people dying from the black community, however, this has changed over time, indicating that this could relate to a geographical cluster rather than an ethnicity-related concern. As our figures for May show, we are not seeing the same disproportionate death rate in BAME communities. The median age of our patients who have died of COVID-19 is 80 years old, with 96.2 per cent having complex medical histories, and 61.8 per cent were male.

“Overall across the Trust throughout March, April and May, the combined mortality data reveals the following breakdown:

  • Asian 21 per cent
  • Black British 16 per cent
  • White 55 per cent
  • Other 8 per cent

“Looking forward, as our ward base changes to requiring a smaller number of wards for COVID + patients, our understanding and examination of hospital-acquired infection will become all the more important to reduce risk to non-COVID patients.”