The Veterans Health Administration (VHA)—along with systems across the world—has spent the past 2 years continuously adapting to meet the emerging needs of persons infected with COVID-19. With the development of effective vaccines and global efforts to mitigate transmission, attention has now shifted to long COVID care as the need for further outpatient health care becomes increasingly apparent.1,2
Background
Multiple terms describe the lingering, multisystem sequelae of COVID-19 that last longer than 4 weeks: long COVID, postacute COVID-19 syndrome, post-COVID condition, postacute sequalae of COVID-19, and COVID long hauler.1,3 Common symptoms include fatigue, shortness of breath, cough, sleep disorders, brain fog or cognitive dysfunction, depression, anxiety, pain, and changes in taste or smell that impact a person’s functioning.4,5 The multisystem nature of the postacute course of COVID-19 necessitates an interdisciplinary approach to devise comprehensive and individualized care plans.6-9 Research is needed to better understand this postacute state (eg, prevalence, underlying effects, characteristics of those who experience long COVID) to establish and evaluate cost-effective treatment approaches.
Many patients who are experiencing symptoms beyond the acute course of COVID-19 have been referred to general outpatient clinics or home health, which may lack the capacity and knowledge of this novel disease to effectively manage complex long COVID cases.2,3 To address this growing need, clinicians and leadership across a variety of disciplines and settings in the VHA created a community of practice (CoP) to create a mechanism for cross-facility communication, identify gaps in long COVID care and research, and cocreate knowledge on best practices for care delivery.
In this spirit, we are embracing a learning health system (LHS) approach that uses rapid-cycle methods to integrate data and real-world experience to iteratively evaluate and adapt models of long COVID care.10 Our clinically identified and data-driven objective is to provide high value health care to patients with long COVID sequalae by creating a framework to learn about this novel condition and develop innovative care models. This article provides an overview of our emerging LHS approach to the study of long COVID care that is fostering innovation and adaptability within the VHA. We describe 3 aspects of our engagement approach central to LHS: the ongoing development of a long COVID CoP dedicated to iteratively informing the bidirectional cycle of data from practice to research, results of a broad environmental scan of VHA long COVID care, and results of a survey administered to CoP members to inform ongoing needs of the community and identify early successful outcomes from participation.