text: Post COVID recovery characteristics of chronically critically ill patients admitted to a long term acute care hospital b Background b Survivors of COVID 19 pneumonia often suffer from chronic critical illness CCI and require long term hospitalization Long term acute care LTAC hospitals are vital in the care of CCI patients but their role for patients post COVID 19 infection is not known Barlow Respiratory Hospital BRH is a 105 bed LTAC hospital network serving ventilator dependent and medically complex patients transferred from the ICUs of hospitals in southern California We report patient characteristics of our first series of COVID 19 survivors admitted to the post acute venue of an LTAC hospital b Methods b Single center observational descriptive report of patients recovering from acute infectious complications of COVID 19 pneumonia requiring long term respiratory support b Results b From 28 April to 7 September 2020 41 patients were admitted to BRH for continued recovery from COVID 19 pneumonia Median age 68 44 94 years 25 41 61 male 33 41 80 5 with tracheostomy 21 41 51 2 on invasive mechanical ventilation 9 41 22 receiving hemodialysis All mechanical ventilation and hemodialysis interventions were initiated at the transferring hospital b Conclusions b To our knowledge this is the first report to characterize CCI and medically complex COVID 19 patients transferred to the post acute venue of an LTAC hospital Patients on average spent over six weeks in the transferring hospital mostly in the ICU are largely elderly carry the known risk factors for COVID 19 infection and experienced respiratory failure necessitating prolonged mechanical ventilation via tracheostomy Our findings suggest that these patients will continue to require considerable medical interventions and treatments including weaning from mechanical ventilation owing to the numerous sequelae of the infection and the burden of acute on chronic diseases As ICU survival rates improve this research further emphasizes the important role of the LTAC hospital in responding to the COVID 19 crisis 