Finalist: Long COVID HCP Discussion Guide by Andrew Wylam, Ty Goodwin, Kerri McCrossen, and Nick Anderegg

Posted by Health+ Long COVID (Admin) 9 months ago Posted in Healthathon Finalists

This discussion guide helps Long COVID patients have more productive visits with their doctor.

Project Case Study

Often, patients bounce around the healthcare system without getting the care they need. The problem is multifaceted, contributed to by a lack of awareness about Long COVID among healthcare providers and patients often facing difficulty articulating their symptoms or not understanding how to navigate the healthcare system effectively. This project was conceived as a solution to this challenge.

The team behind this project included multiple Long COVID patients, a healthcare practitioner, an attorney, and a technical writer.

We chose to create a 1-page (front and back) resource in the hopes that it would be easy for Long COVID patients to understand and bring with them to their appointments. Our approach included group discussions about the problem, multiple feedback sessions, and iterations on the work product. Our main obstacle was trying to include all the important information in the discussion guide without getting distracted by secondary issues related to access to care for Long COVID patients. We incorporated the Treatment Journey section (pages 30-35) of the Health+ Long COVID report into our work product because it illustrates the challenges we’re hoping to address. Additionally, we recognized the significant numbers of disabled long COVID patients identified by the U.S. Census Bureau’s Household Pulse Survey when deciding to include additional information about obtaining disability benefits into the resource.

We will be sharing this resource on the Pandemic Patients website for free. We intend to continue iterating on the work product to strengthen its utility for Long COVID patients.

This post was edited on Sep 19, 2024 by Health+ Long COVID