Preparation for Health Care Providers

Many health care providers aren’t adequately prepared to recognize Long COVID, or outright do not believe their patients. This leaves people with Long COVID without answers, options, or at the very least, a validation of their experience.

• Many health care providers, particularly in the primary care community, do not have the knowledge base that would enable them to link a constellation of potential symptoms to Long COVID. As a result, instead of being able to provide a diagnosis and initiate a care pathway during an initial appointment, health care providers may send people with Long COVID to a string of other specialists, delaying diagnosis, treatment, and the ability to apply for disability.
• People with Long COVID symptoms are frequently misdiagnosed by health care providers as functions of stress, anxiety, and depression; or, they are dismissed entirely, with many providers siding with test results—which often come back normal—over the patient’s word.
• Long COVID symptoms in children are regularly missed or dismissed by pediatric providers. Children may not have the language to describe what they feel, or they simply may not be believed. As a result, there is often no further investigation of their symptoms.
• People with Long COVID often have to educate their providers about Long COVID, its potential pathologies, treatment options, relevant specialty areas, and clinical trials.
• The current reimbursement structure for health care providers works for simple problems and quick fixes, not complex, chronic illnesses. Providers usually do not have time to review complex patient medical records in advance of an appointment, much less discuss and make sense of a complex combination of symptoms during one.