Factors associated with prolonged length of hospital stay among COVID-19 cases admitted to the largest treatment center in Eastern Ethiopia

INTRODUCTION: The hospital admissions load and how long each patient will stay in the hospital should be known to prevent the overwhelming of the health system during coronavirus disease 2019 era. Even though the length of hospital stay could vary due to different factors, the factors that affect the stay are not well characterized yet, particularly in the resource-limited settings. Knowing the time spent by the coronavirus disease 2019 patients in the hospital and its associated factors are important to prioritize mobilizing resources, such as beds, pharmacological and non-pharmacological supplies, and health personnel. Therefore, this study was intended to determine the median and identify factors associated with the length of hospital stay among coronavirus disease 2019 cases. METHODS: A facility-based cross-sectional study design was implemented on 394 randomly selected hospitalized patients. Epidata Version 3.1 software was used for data entry, and further analysis was done using Stata version 14.2 software. Frequencies, median with interquartile range, and chi-square test were performed. A logistic regression model was used to identify the association between outcome and explanatory variables. The statistical significance was declared at p-value of less than 0.05 at 95% confidence interval. RESULTS: The analysis was done for a total of 394 cases admitted for coronavirus disease 2019. The median age of the study participants was 40 years with interquartile range of 28–60 years. The median length of hospital stay was 12 days with the interquartile range of 8–17 days. The patients presented with shortness of breathing (AOR = 2.74, 95% confidence interval: 1.33–5.66), incident organ failure (AOR = 3.65, 95% confidence interval: 1.15–11.58), increased leukocyte count (AOR = 0.95; 95% confidence interval: 0.91–0.99), and blood urea nitrogen (AOR = 0.98, 95% confidence interval: 0.97–0.99) had a significant association with prolonged hospital stay. CONCLUSION: This study demonstrated that the proportion of patients stayed above the median hospital stay of the total patients was 185 (46.9%) with the median length of 12 (interquartile range = 8–17) days. Patients presented with difficulty of breathing, had incident organ failure, had decreased leukocyte, and blood urea nitrogen level should be estimated to stay longer in the hospital. Hence, patients with prolonged hospital length of stay associating factors should be expected to consume more pharmacological and non-pharmacological resources during hospital care receiving.