Patients will need aftercare for up to a year, doctors warn NHS

COVID-19 patients will be monitored for up to a year, one hospital trust has revealed, amid concern over pressure on the NHS to provide aftercare.

Emphasis has been placed on discharging patients rather than providing long-term rehabilitation, meaning some are unlikely to make a full recovery, charities and health unions have warned. Patients have suffered with symptoms for months after testing positive, with some even losing the ability to walk after spending weeks in hospital, doctors said.

Dr Matthew Knight, a consultant respiratory physician at West Hertfordshire Hospitals Trust, said some of his patients were still experiencing breathlessness, fatigue and the “sensation of temperature” seven weeks after contracting the virus.

“Some of these poor people can’t walk, they’ve lost all their muscle mass and they really are starting from a very low base physically,” Dr Andrew Barlow, the clinical lead for respiratory medicine at the trust, said.

The trust has launched an aftercare pathway for recovering patients, in lieu of official NHS guidance which was due to be released at the end of April.

Dr Barlow said they had agreed with their local NHS clinical commissioning group that patients who were severely ill with the virus would be monitored for up to a year, including regular check-ups for lung function and cardiac health. But, without an established rehabilitation pathway from the NHS, patients were unlikely to recover fully and could end up back in hospital, a health workers’ union warned.

Ruth ten Hove, head of development and research at the Chartered Society of Physiotherapy, said the NHS “hasn’t really thought” about how it will meet the needs of recovering patients, as it has “focused on discharging people”.

Describing the recovery pathway for patients as “really tough”, she said it was critical to have one in place.

Ms ten Hove said traditional would have to be adapted because of “an enormous fear factor” around the virus that meant patients were reluctant to allow health workers into their homes.

A balance must be made between “risk and perspective”, she added. “It’s complex, but there isn’t any clear plan from the Government yet.”

Neil Tester, the director of the Richmond Group, a coalition of 14 leading health and care charities including Age UK and the British Heart Foundation, said “impetus” must be placed behind longer-term planning in order to avoid “worse outcomes and pressures on services in future”.

Recovering patients were dealing with mental as well as physical problems so a “wide range of rehabilitation needs” must be considered, he added, arguing that a “long-haul” recovery would be even “longer and harder if people’s individual situations aren’t considered in the round from the start”.

When contacted, NHS England did not provide a date for when the rehabilitation guidance will be published.