Long COVID Recovery Care

Are you a B.C. health-care provider wondering about supports for patients living with persistent and disabling long COVID symptoms?

The Post-COVID-19 Interdisciplinary Clinical Care Network can help. The Network offers clinical care, patient and provider education, and research to health-care providers caring for patients experiencing long COVID symptoms.

This page provides health-care providers with a centralized resource for the latest evidence and recommendations for managing long COVID symptoms.

As a starting point, you can review a visual of a long COVID patient’s care pathway: Long COVID patient care pathway (PDF)

Clinical care

Rapid access to specialist consultation line

Rapid Access to Specialist Consultation (RACE) app: Urgent questions that require a call back within 2 hours. RACE is staffed Monday to Friday, 9 a.m.-5 p.m. The specialty is listed as "COVID – GIM Post Infection Care".
Read PC-ICCN’s analysis of the types and frequency of long COVID questions asked on the RACE line.

eCase

Electronic Consultative Access to Specialist Expertise (eCASE): e-consults within seven days. Primary care providers can submit questions, patient history and attachments via a secure messaging app. The specialty is listed as "Post-COVID-19 Care".

Referral process

1. To refer a patient to the Post COVID-19 Interdisciplinary Clinical Care Network (the Network), please fill out the referral form (PDF) and fax it to 604-806-8809.

You can refer patients with persistent symptoms for more than three (3) months following a presumed or confirmed COVID-19 illness. There is no need for a positive COVID test. Symptoms must be limiting your patient's ability to function in daily life.

Note: You must complete a full history, physical examination and relevant investigations as part of differential diagnoses and to rule out other conditions explaining the symptoms. Please review the Pre-Referral Diagnostic Checklist for required investigations prior to referral.

2. Clinic staff from the Post-COVID Recovery Clinic will contact your patient directly to review and assess their case. They will determine the appropriate level of services required to support your patient's recovery.

The Post-COVID Recovery Clinic supports patients with group education, rehabilitation supports and self-recovery tools. It does not provide diagnostic or investigative services. Please advise your patients accordingly.

Post-COVID Recovery Clinic

The virtual Post-COVID Recovery Clinic (based at Providence Health Care) is available to all patients across B.C. who meet clinical eligibility criteria. The clinic is an allied-health-led, rehabilitation-focused virtual clinic. It is staffed by an interdisciplinary group of allied health professionals, nurses and physicians and offers evidence-based care pathways.

Once accepted to the clinic, patients are contacted by an intake clinician who recommends a care pathway suited to their unique needs.

Through the clinic, patients have access to group education sessions, led by social workers, physiotherapists, occupational therapists and other team members. These sessions will give them techniques and strategies to support their recovery from long COVID. If patientsrequire it, clinic staff will arrange one-on-one appointments with allied health professionals or physicians.

For information: post-COVID-ICCN@phsa.ca

Education/resources

Provincial Post-COVID-19 Recovery Pathway

This pathway is posted as a tool on BC Pathways. Please note that some of the links are internal on Pathways and will require a login to access. Download the PDF version below.Provincial Post-COVID-19 Recovery Pathway

Additional resources for clinicians

Canadian Guidelines for Post COVID-19 Condition: Canadian website managed by Cochrane Canada and McMaster GRADE Centre to share evidence based guidelines on long COVID care.
COVID-19 rapid guideline: managing the long-term effects of COVID-19: Developed by the National Institute for Health and Care Excellence in the United Kingdom.
Clinical Overview of Long COVID from the US Centers for Disease Control web site
Trusted Resources for Patients, Families and Healthcare Professionals: resources from Long COVID web, a Canadian network supporting research into long COVID

Research

The Post-COVID-19 Interdisciplinary Clinical Care Network coordinates patient-oriented research that leads to rapid learning and data-sharing to improve care. There are opportunities for both researchers and patients to get involved in long COVID research to support people living with symptoms.

For researchers

For patients

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