One year in, DHMC's Post-Acute COVID Syndrome Clinic continues to learn about condition while caring for patients

Dartmouth Health’s Dartmouth Hitchcock Medical Center (DHMC) has marked one year since opening the regions first Post-Acute COVID Syndrome (PACS) Clinic. To date, the clinic has received 760 patient referrals, with approximately 400 seen or currently scheduled to be seen.  While other PACS (also known as “long haul COVID”) clinics in the United States have extensive waitlists, the clinic at DHMC, which was the first in northern New England and is the only clinic of its kind in the region and sees patients from New Hampshire and Vermont, has been able to see patients within a few weeks of being referred.

Supported by test results and assessments made by primary care providers (PCP), clinic leader Jeffrey Parsonnet, MD, a member of the Infectious Diseases Section, and Christina F. Martin, MSN, APRN, Infectious Disease and International Health, assess patients in-person and using telehealth. Most patients that are now being referred had a relatively mild case of COVID-19 that didn’t require hospitalization and were vaccinated. Three-quarters of all patients are women, as has been seen at other PACS clinics around the country.

“Patients with long COVID-19 often have normal labs, scans of various kinds, and echocardiograms (tests using ultrasound to monitor heart function)—but they feel horrible, and this can be especially challenging. It’s similar to chronic fatigue syndrome in that it causes a lot of emotional stress, along with physical symptoms,” Parsonnet explains. “Much of what the PACS Clinic provides is affirmation and validation of patients' symptoms, letting them know it’s not just in their heads.”

The purpose of the clinic is primarily to help patients but also to conduct research into this syndrome. The team received a grant from the Susan & Richard Levy Health Care Delivery Incubator to assist in designing a care delivery model and do research on PACS.

The most common symptoms are fatigue and brain fog. Brain fog can be severe enough to cause people to get lost driving in their own town; multitasking becomes difficult, word-finding a struggle, and short-term memory is impaired. Symptoms are often severe enough to cause significant disability, including inability to work.   

Patients must be referred by their PCP, be 18 years of age or older, and be experiencing symptoms for at least three months after initial COVID-19 infection. The PACS Clinic also connects patients with referrals to specialists as needed, including Neurology, Pulmonology, Cardiology, Psychiatry and Rehabilitation Medicine (which includes occupational therapy for cognitive rehabilitation and physical therapy for fatigue management).

“What’s evident is that this syndrome is NOT going away as the number of severe COVID-19 cases declines,” Parsonnet reports. “The problem of long haul COVID is not getting better—it’s getting worse.”

For more information, visit Post-Acute COVID Syndrome Clinic or call 603-650-9484.