Nearly 90 of Rhode Island’s ‘discharged’ coronavirus patients are in fact dead

(File photo) Dr. Beth Toolan conducts a coronavirus test at the state's first walk-up testing site which opened Tuesday, April 21, 2020, in Providence, R.I.(David Goldman/AP)

Nearly 90 of Rhode Island’s coronavirus patients who were listed by the state as “discharged” from hospitals had, in fact, died.

Of the state’s 466 COVID-19 patients who were listed as having been discharged, 86 actually died at hospitals — amounting to almost one in five patients, Target 12 reported Tuesday night after speaking with the Rhode Island Health Department.

Based on the department’s data, it looked as though every coronavirus patient who had at one point or another been hospitalized in Rhode Island was either still hospitalized or had been discharged, making it look as though no such patients had died.

This stuck out given Health Department Director Dr. Nicole Alexander-Scott’s remarks during the government’s daily briefing that “a few" hospital deaths, “but the number is small.”

When asked whether deaths were being marked as discharges, she told Target 12, “We’ll nail that down.”

As of Tuesday night, the bulk of the state’s 239 deaths linked to the virus were nursing home residents, others took place at people’s homes, and hospital deaths made up 36% of the state’s coronavirus deaths, Alexander-Scott told the outlet.

Even so, at least some of the 380 patients who left hospitals alive may have died at home, Health Department spokesman Joseph Wendelken told Target 12.

He explained that the way the public understands discharges may not be in line with how hospitals determine them, as the discharge code used for a given patient is based on “discharge disposition."

“There is a code for transfer to home, transfer to hospice, leaving AMA (against medical advice), etc.,” he said. “One discharge disposition code is for people who have passed away.”

Given that most non-medical personnel understand a discharge to mean a patient has left the hospital alive, Wendelken said the department would adjust the category online.