UB physicians direct Western New York’s first long COVID center

UBMD Internal Medicine has opened Western New York’s first long COVID center. Funded by a grant from the Mother Cabrini Health Foundation with support from UB, the center is accepting all patients, regardless of whether they have insurance.

Staffed by providers and physicians at UBMD Internal Medicine who are faculty members at the Jacobs School of Medicine and Biomedical Sciences at UB, the UBMD Long COVID Center is open and seeing patients.

To schedule an appointment, contact Trudy Stern at 716-323-0674. 

“The acute phase of the COVID-19 pandemic may have, thankfully, passed, but there are countless stories of Western New Yorkers who are still experiencing a collection of symptoms from COVID,” says Allison Brashear, vice president for health sciences at UB, dean of the Jacobs School and president of UBMD Physicians’ Group. “The Long COVID Center will put these individuals at the forefront and make the resources needed more accessible.”

“Our center welcomes everyone,” says Sanjay Sethi, center co-director and professor and chief of the Division of Pulmonary, Critical Care and Sleep Medicine at UBMD Internal Medicine and the Jacobs School.

The center’s ability to serve all patients, regardless of their insurance status, was made possible by funding from the Mother Cabrini Health Foundation, whose mission is to improve the health and well-being of the most vulnerable New Yorkers.

Sethi adds that a partnership between the center and the Buffalo Urban League is promoting outreach to Buffalo’s underserved communities, which have been hard hit by COVID-19 and by long COVID as well.

To help reduce barriers to care, costs of care, including parking, will be reimbursed for individuals with economic hardship. 

“We are focused on providing a comprehensive assessment of patients who may have long COVID, many of whom feel they have been forgotten,” Sethi explains. “Because of that, the initial visit will take significantly longer than a typical office visit, so that we can take a full medical history and collect all relevant information from medical records.” 

Each patient will then be evaluated by a multidisciplinary team of UBMD Internal Medicine providers, occupational and physical therapists, and a social worker and community health worker from the Buffalo Urban League. Based on review of all material, the team will determine which tests and management plans to recommend to each patient.

Subsequent appointments will be scheduled based on the needs of each patient. 

“The plan will be different for each patient,” Sethi notes. “Some patients will be referred to medical specialists, while others will be referred to physical or occupational therapy. We will individualize the plan to whatever each individual needs. In addition, we want to pay careful attention to social determinants of health, including issues of health care access and community support.”

Sethi acknowledges the frustration that is all too familiar for patients with long COVID.

“It is true that right now there are no diagnostic tests and zero proven treatments for long COVID,” he says. “These are challenging patients, and our goal is to spend time with them, to find out what is going on and how we can help.”

Providers with the center are committed to spending the time that is necessary to properly evaluate patients; they are aware that in some cases, long COVID will not turn out to be the primary cause of symptoms.

“People may come in with symptoms of conditions that they may have had before COVID-19 but were either never diagnosed or may have been exacerbated by COVID,” says Jennifer Abeles, center co-director with Sethi, a physician with UBMD Internal Medicine and clinical assistant professor of medicine in the Jacobs School. “For example, maybe there are thyroid issues that were never diagnosed. We will order certain blood tests based on what we’re seeing. The goal is to figure out a management plan for that person and then to see how they respond. Are they getting better? What helped and what didn’t help? We need to do a full evaluation of these people.”

So far, Sethi says, most patients first see their primary care provider, who may or may not have other patients with long COVID. By contrast, he says, patients at the Long COVID Center will benefit because their providers will be able to leverage what they see from multiple cases.

Another unique aspect of the center is the emphasis on non-medication interventions, such as physical and occupational therapy, to address such symptoms as chronic fatigue. Teaching coping techniques and providing social support will also be part of a holistic approach to care provided by the center. 

Center providers will also be seeking opportunities to share what they are learning with other providers in Western New York. “We will be working to share what we find out, to make other primary care providers in the region long COVID-competent,” Sethi says. 

The UBMD Long COVID Center is part of an ongoing joint effort by UBMD Physicians’ Group and UB that has been focused on investigating, managing and conducting research on long COVID since the start of the COVID-19 pandemic.

Last fall, UB and UBMD launched the Western New York Community-based Long COVID Registry, a questionnaire for people with long COVID that gives them a chance to describe their symptoms in detail. The goal of the registry is to connect patients with information about long COVID and potentially with opportunities to enroll in research while providing clinicians with more information about the extent of long COVID in Western New York.

So far, more than 800 people have participated in the registry. The registry has become an important source of patients for the Long COVID Center. While filling out the registry isn’t required to become a patient at the center, the center’s directors strongly encourage it.

“The Long COVID Registry is one of the best ways to become a patient at the Long COVID Center,” Abeles says. “A key benefit is that researchers at UB who are conducting long COVID studies can use the registry to inform and recruit potential participants.”

For example, Thomas Guttuso, a physician with UBMD Neurology and a professor of neurology in the Jacobs School who conducted a long COVID clinical trial on low-dose lithium, used the registry to enroll many participants.

“People do get better with time. I’ve seen it with my own patients,” Sethi says. “If you look at the incidence of long COVID at three months after acute infection, it may be around 25% but that number declines and people improve with time. It’s a complex disorder though, so we need to tease out all the factors, do the most comprehensive assessment we can do, offer potential therapies that will likely not do any harm, and invite people into research studies where that’s possible. That is the goal of our long COVID initiative.”

For more information visit the WNY Long COVID Center website or call 716-323-0674. 

In addition to the Jacobs School physicians, other UB faculty associated with the center are Janice Tona, clinical associate professor and director of the occupational therapy program; Jacob I. McPherson, clinical assistant professor; and Abigail Kubiak, adjunct instructor, all of the Department of Rehabilitation Science, School of Public Health and Health Professions.