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Comment by pixl97 | Hacker News Reader

Ok, so lets take this the other way.

The doctor says "Yep, Covid fucked you over"... What changes?

That doctor is not handing you out a candy bag of medicine to see what fixes your issues. Your "was training" is still going to be that "was". Now after some large number of people like you start showing up for the same issue, then some smaller portion of them get direct diagnosis (either post death, or during some other surgery), the doctors won't know what to do as a means of treatment. It's likely it will be years longer till we have effective means of treating long covid symptoms.

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A lot changes.

1. I would feel taken seriously.

2. I would still be seeing them to check-up on my health.

3. I would be discussing the budding literature to try promising things (i.e. atorvastatin, AT1RB, etc) - https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC9520195/

4. Other patients who are young and healthy are also validated (i.e. we are seeing more of you)

5. etc

The problem with western medicine today is that if you cannot be treated, they want you out of the system. The system is starting to get much better at adapting to these novel health challenges though. I suppose that will happen when there's 65 million across the world with these issues!

The system is already overloaded by an aging population and a shortage of practitioners. There is no capacity to schedule extra office visits for the sake of making patients feel that they are validated and being taken seriously. That may seem cruel, but that is our reality. It's only going to get worse as the demographic situation continues to deteriorate.

There's absolutely a shortage, but what about recent innovations or acceptance of things like e-visits, 24/7 clinics, and even AI-assistance for clerical work taking more load off of practitioners?

For example, I'm looking at my HCP's app right now and can schedule a call with my doctors as early as next week for an e-visit. For an in-person visit, it's closer to a month. But they have absolutely been taking my extra office visits due to my condition.

Telehealth visits and expanded clinic hours make obtaining certain types of care more convenient for patients. They do nothing to address practitioner productivity and workload. It's still one practitioner working directly with one patient.

AI might eventually reduce charting workload slightly. A few vendors have launched new products in that space but they haven't had much impact yet. In the ideal case they might allow for an average doctor to squeeze in a couple more short encounters per day.

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7540911/ Suggests both pros and cons depending on if the facility is at capacity already or not.

I suspect GP would find the subjective difference between "go home, it's all in your head" and "you aren't crazy, but I don't know how to help you" to be meaningful.

It would unlock insurance money for treating the root cause.

Long COVID's effects are so random and personalized that many people have to throw the kitchen sink at it until they find a solution that works for them.

What insurance money is being locked? If a patient has severe symptoms then insurers will pay claims that meet medical necessity criteria for symptomatic treatment regardless of whether the patient has been formally diagnosed with "long COVID" or whatever.

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