Top Hospitals offer Long COVID clinics that appear, to me, to be little more than a scam to make money
If you don't generate evidence your clinic helps, and it makes you tons of money, is it not a scam?
Our new paper on Long COVID clinics and services among top hospitals is out now! Lots of interesting findings
Here is the link to the free paper.
First, this is the distribution of LONG COVID centers at top hospitals
Next, only 40% require that you have evidence you had COVID in the past. What even makes it a long COVID clinic then?
Third, look at the services they offer: lab tests, scans, and more
They offer many specialists to order more tests that have no evidence they will benefit you
Finally, not a single center is randomizing long COVID sufferers to this battery of medical testing/ specialists vs. usual care/ wait list to prove that the clinic itself offers value or benefit to patients.
In short, top hospitals in the US are making tons of money by offering a long COVID clinic. They are not always even restricting this to people who had COVID. They have no evidence that any of the tests they order improve outcomes. No evidence that these specialists make people better off.
You might even argue that this is just a scam to swindle long COVID sufferers.
To me, I find it sad that we can’t do right by these patients with proper RCTs.
I was a dentist in an earlier life. My patient was the center of my universe. Today, the patient is a cog in a money making machine. My doctors work for the corporation. Not me. They are still trying to sell me another mRNA shot. This started over a decade ago with Obamacare, which I, as a Congressman, voted against. I believed at the time it would force healthcare into larger and larger organizations for delivery. Covid just sealed the deal. I have no confidence in the healthcare industry any longer. Least of all the government healthcare organizations such as the CDC, NIH, NAIAD and FDA. They lied and people died. All for money.
I'd love to see a cross country comparison of long covid prevalence. For example, compare the USA vs Kenya: the neurotic (sorry, but accurate for a large segment of the USA) vs people with no time for such nonsense.