Page 10 - Mobility Management, January/February 2022
P. 10

Feature Series
COVID-19’S WIDE REACH
and take care of that child, so now that appointment’s canceled. The child that needs the treatment is fine, but nonetheless, the appointment is canceled, and they don’t get that treatment.”
Could COVID cause current CRT users to need more complex equipment? Or could the virus require previously able-bodied people to need CRT?
“Actually, I’ve seen both,” Carver said. “I have seen a healthy young 60s gentleman, not overweight, no health problems — got COVID and had a horrible long course of it. Went through long acute care, ICU, came through inpatient rehab and discharged to home in Complex Rehab. Just totally shut his strength down.”
She described people “doing fine in Group 2 — got COVID and the recovery was super slow and it affected their ability to do transfers and to shift their weight and to go to the restroom.”
Documenting the need for new equipment isn’t easy under current policies. “I think if they got that Group 2 [power chair]
a year or two ago, and now they got COVID, I am not aware that Medicare is recognizing long-haul COVID as one of those diag- noses that lets you move someone to a Group 3, because it’s not a neurological condition,” Carver said.
“And that is a difficult hurdle when someone presents with Group 3 needs: high risk for skin breakdown, can’t do a pres- sure relief, spasms, maybe bowel and bladder issues, respiratory
issues, all those things that would make you totally qualify someone for power tilt, power recline, and maybe even that edema in their lower extremities. But they don’t have the diag- nosis. You can’t get all that added to a Group 2 [chair].
“What would be helpful, big picture, is if CMS [Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services] and all our other insurance companies would allow us to justify what people need based on their level of function instead of these diagnoses.”
Carver added that the need to justify new equipment for people whose conditions have changed will continue.
“We’re going to probably be doing that for the next two or three years for people that got their chairs right before the pandemic and then got impacted by it,” she said. “I know some nurses that got COVID from working, especially one who is now waiting on a liver transplant.
“So we may be taking care of our own with CRT, our own healthcare providers who get it because they’re working in it and don’t bounce back. It affects organs, and this young man, this nurse who was 26 years old, is on dialysis from it all.”
HOW COVID HAS HURT MENTAL HEALTH
The prolonged pandemic has taken a health toll on all of CRT. “We have people coming into clinic who haven’t spoken to
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