BUFFALO, N.Y. — UBMD Internal Medicine is the first to open a Long COVID Center in Western New York that accepts any patient with or without insurance.
“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,” said Allison Brashear, MD, 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.”
The center, which is located in Conventus Medical office on the Buffalo Niagara Medical Campus, was funded by a grant from Mother Cabrini Health Foundation along with the support from the University at Buffalo.
The Buffalo Urban League has also partnered with the center to help Buffalo's underserved communities who have suffered from COVID-19 as well. Care cost and parking will be reimbursed for economically challenged community members.
The providers and physicians at the center come directly from UBMD Internal Medicine at the Jacobs School of Medicine and Biomedical Sciences at UB.
There can be individualized treatment plans and appointments made for each patient who has specific symptoms and cases of long COVID.
Sanjay Sethi, MD, 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 emphasizes the benefits of the Long COVID Center to those who also receive care from their primary care providers.
"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 to invite people into research studies where that’s possible. That is the goal of our Long COVID initiative,” Sethi said.
While there is no cure for COVID, there are the center will do what the can to help patients.
“It is true that right now there are no diagnostic tests and zero proven treatments for long COVID,” Sethi said. “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.”
Registering to the Long COVID Center is not required but strongly encouraged to help the physicians develop accurate research.
You can register for the Long COVID Center here.