On the Use of HIS Administrative Data to Assess Mortality Among Comorbid Hospitalized Patients - Lessons Learned from the COVID-19 Pandemic.

COVID-19 was associated with hospitalization and high mortality rate. Previous studies suggested higher mortality rate in COVID-19 patients with comorbidities. To our knowledge, most of the published articles focused on clinical characteristics and treatment based on patients' medical records (EMR). Based on our experience with comorbid hospitalized COVID-19 patients, we argue that HIS administrative data can be used to identify what comorbidities and other factors are associated with hospitalized COVID-19 patients' mortality and provide a quick initial assessment in view to identifying comorbid individuals that are more prone to worse outcome thus improving patient management not only during pandemics.