Study design and cohort selection
This retrospective, observational, multicenter cohort study within the Hackensack Meridian Health network (HMH) utilized EHR-derived data of patients with documented SARS-CoV-2 infection who received care initially within an outpatient setting. Our primary objective was to evaluate the association between hydroxychloroquine exposure and subsequent need for hospitalization in a population of patients with documented SARS-CoV-2 infection diagnosed in the outpatient setting.
Database inclusion and exclusion criteria for this review: 1) Positive SARS-CoV-2 diagnosis by reverse-transcriptase polymerase chain reaction, 2) Outpatient status (includes emergency room diagnosis without immediate hospitalization on the same day) at an HMH outpatient facility between March 1, 2020 until April 22, 2020. Follow-up continued through May 22, 2020.
Institutional Review Board (IRB) approval was obtained for access to the prospective observational database, under Hackensack Meridian Health IRB Study# Pro2020–0342. The requirement for patient informed consent (verbal or written) was waived by the IRB as this project represented a non-interventional study utilizing routinely collected data for secondary research purposes.
Data sources
We collected data from HMH’s EHR (Epic) which is utilized throughout the network. Outpatients treated at a network related facility were flagged by the EHR if SARS-CoV-2 polymerase chain reaction tests were positive. These EHR-generated reports served as our eligible cohort sample. Demographic, clinical characteristics, treatments, and outcomes were manually abstracted by research nurses and physicians from the John Theurer Cancer Center at Hackensack University Medical Center. Assignment of patients to our data team occurred in real-time but was not randomized. To reduce sampling bias the final cohort included 100% of outpatients by April 22, 2020 as noted on the EHR-generated reports. Data abstracted by the team were entered utilizing Research Electronic Data Capture (REDCap). Quality control was performed by physicians (AI, SLG) overseeing nurse or physician abstraction. It should be also noted that data abstracted for this project, specifically lab data and hospitalization data, were also used in two other observational cohort studies on the effect of inpatient hydroxychloroquine and tocilizumab on COVID-19 outcomes [6, 21].
Demographic information was collected by an electronic face-sheet. Comorbidities were defined as diagnosed prior to hospitalization for COVID-19. If not listed in the patient’s record comorbidities were recorded as absent.
Exposure
For hydroxychloroquine, exposure was defined as a prescription written for the drug as found in the EHR, by documentation in a provider note or in the medication section of the chart. No confirmation of prescription fill or adherence to the medication regimen was attempted. If no evidence of administration of the drug was found, this was recorded as not having received the drug. Hydroxychloroquine exposure, for the purpose of this study, was limited to initiation of treatment in the outpatient setting. Patients who did not have a prehospital exposure, who was subsequently admitted to a hospital, and then received first dose of hydroxychloroquine in the inpatient setting were counted as having no outpatient exposure to hydroxychloroquine.
Outcome measures
The primary outcome measurement was subsequent need for hospitalization with follow-up until May 22, 2020. Hospitalization was identified on EHR review which includes the 13-hospitals within the Hackensack Meridian Health network. The EPIC system also notifies a limited number of participating hospitals outside the network (Epic Care-Everywhere). No attempt to contact the patient to confirm hospitalization outside the network was permitted or performed. Among patients who were hospitalized, the time from date of diagnosis to hospitalization and the requirement for intensive unit care level support or death was also collected. Safety events including discontinuation due to QTc prolongation or arrhythmia incidence after hydroxychloroquine exposure were recorded as per chart review.
Exploratory outcomes included the effect of outpatient hydroxychloroquine exposure on elderly patients over age 65, on patients with more than 2 days of self-reported symptoms, and on patients with at least one reported symptom of fever, shortness of breath, or cough.
Statistical analysis
Demographic and clinical parameters of hydroxychloroquine treatment were summarized using median (Q1-Q3) for continuous variables and frequency (percentages) for categorical variables. The differences in the median/distributions of demographic and clinical parameters between the hydroxychloroquine treated and untreated (no hydroxychloroquine) groups were compared using Mood’s median test for continuous variables and Fisher’s exact test or Pearson’s chi-squared test for categorical variables. The comparator group in both the unmatched and propensity matched cohorts included only patients who did not receive hydroxychloroquine.
Multivariable adjusted logistic regression models were fitted to estimate the association between hydroxychloroquine exposure and the need for subsequent hospitalization using clinically likely confounders including age, gender, cancer, hypertension, COPD/asthma, diabetes, fever, cough, shortness of breath, and qSOFA score. When the model goodness-of-fit was not satisfied, we further reduced the aforementioned confounders using the stepwise variable selection and the lasso variable selection [22]. The odds ratios (OR) and their 95% confidence intervals were summarized.
To reduce the confounding effects secondary to imbalances in receiving hydroxychloroquine treatment inherent to a retrospective cohort study, we employed propensity-score matching. First, we calculated a propensity score (PS) of receiving hydroxychloroquine treatment for each patient using multivariable logistic regression via adjusting for the aforementioned set of confounder variables except time to hydroxychloroquine treatment. Goodness-of-fit of the multivariable logistic model was examined using the Hosmer-Lemeshow test. We then employed a nonparametric nearest neighbor matching of propensity scores to generate a matched cohort in a 1:10 ratio to pair a patient with hydroxychloroquine treatment to ten patients without hydroxychloroquine treatment (MatchIt Package in R) [22, 23].
With the propensity matched cohort, we repeated the adjusted logistic model with the propensity matched set similar to the unmatched analyses. Sensitivity analyses for confounders were conducted by including the propensity score as a covariate in the unmatched model and by including informative confounders chosen by stepwise selection. Missing data in categorical covariates were coded as a missing data category and were included in the all analyses. Completely observed data by excluding patients with missing covariates were also examined summarized in Supplementary Tables (see Additional file 1). The Kaplan-Meier method and log-rank test were performed to evaluate and compare the median time from date of diagnosis to hospitalization between the hydroxychloroquine treated and untreated groups. Furthermore, we performed an exploratory analysis from time of symptom onset to date of first dose of hydroxychloroquine. A cut-off of less than 2 days from time of symptom onset was used for a logistic regression analysis comparing those with early disease versus later as there appeared to be a stronger benefit to early administration of hydroxychloroquine [24]. Statistical significance was determined when two-sided p-value< 0.05. Subgroup analyses were performed exploratory and thus multiple-test correction was not applied. All statistical analyses were conducted using R software (ver. 3.4., R Project for Statistical Computing).