Janeway Institute Working Papers - Abstracts | The Cambridge-INET Institute

Quantifying Excess Mortality Among Non COVID-19 Patients in Healthcare Settings

JIWP Number: 2224

Abstract: COVID-19 drastically increased demand- and supply pressures faced by healthcare systems. Increased pressures may have negative spillovers into non COVID-19 care which can cause preventable excess deaths among patients seeking medical help for reasons unrelated to COVID-19. This paper finds substantial and robust evidence of such non COVID-19 excess deaths among hospital patients leveraging data from an integrated public healthcare system: the NHS in England. We find that there is at least one additional preventable death among hospital patients seeking medical help for reasons unrelated to COVID-19 for every 30 deaths that can be linked to COVID-19. In aggregate, there were 4,003 such excess deaths during the first twelve months of the pandemic. At the healthcare provider level, the increase in non COVID-19 excess deaths is sharply increasing in COVID-19 induced pressures on hospitals.

Keywords: congestion effects, COVID-19, excess mortality, externalities, pandemic, public health