Those who are still suffering with long COVID in the Odessa-Midland area may not be aware of a post-COVID clinic that is currently available at MCH.
Since December, local Pulmonologist Dr. Khavar Dar of Odessa Medical Enterprises, and his team have been teaming up with Medical Center Hospital, operating a post-COVID clinic at the Wheatley Stewart Medical Pavilion on the MCHS campus.
The idea of the clinic is to help patients who have contracted COVID-19 and are dealing with lingering after effects.
Dar and his team have been working with Director of Pulmonary Resources at MCH Dr. Renato Galindo with this clinic.
“I think from my point of view, we just want to let them know that we can address most long-term consequences of COVID,” Dar said. “We’re here as a resource. We would like to help. Going back to the initial point, we want it to be a service to our community. It’s gone through a lot. That was the goal MCH had. We were on the same page as far as that was concerned and help those who have suffered through the illness. Galindo and his team have been instrumental in helping partner up.”
Dar said the idea for the clinic originally came during the first wave.
“I had presented it to the administration here at ORMC because we were having large volumes of patients in the hospital who were getting discharged but really lacked follow up of any kind,” Dar said. “One of the problems of that time was that clinics were not seeing patients directly in the office. They were getting largely ignored in a way because a lot of them needed specific care, in addition to simple things like titrating their oxygen levels and getting them back to work and so on. That was my idea at the time but it didn’t catch on.”
Then, last year, Dar approached the subject again and said it didn’t go through. He then brought it up with Chief Nursing Officer at MCH Christin Timmons.
“She thought it was a wonderful idea,” Dar said. “There was a need in the community because during the omicron wave, there was such a large volume of in psatients and they were getting discharged and really no clear follow up for them. The primary care physicians are very good in the area but there are other things they lack the expertise in. So, we thought this would be a good idea to serve the community during the two years of the pandemic.”
As a pulmonologist, Dar is certified by the American Board of Internal Medicine and carries a subspecialty in critical care medicine and pulmonary disease.
Dar and Galindo have treated many COVID patients during and post-infections.
“During the wave, we helped a lot of patients,” Dar said. “Through this time, we’ve been helping a lot of patients. We do in-patient work too. We see them from the beginning to the end. Those that get discharged from the hospital, we follow them up at the clinic. We’ve helped them in different ways. We’ve been treating the symptoms. We’ve been treating specific illnesses associated with COVID. Then, administrative things like getting them back to work, establish their suitability to going back to the kind of work they were doing previously and so on. That was the idea. We could’ve done this by ourselves in our offices but we wanted it to be something that the hospital can do to serve the community.”
The clinic takes place every Thursday at the Wheatley Stewart Medical Pavilion on the MCHS campus.
Usually, the clinic is open in the afternoons but if there’s a large volume of patients, it’ll sometimes be open all day.
“In half a day, we see 15-20 patients,” Dar said. “They require a little bit of care and some detailed evaluations. We do comprehensive evaluations of everything. We don’t deal with just lung symptoms. We do neurologic symptoms.”
Many patients who have contracted COVID continue to struggle with symptoms even after infection including: headaches, joint pain, coughing, shortness of breath and “brain fog” as well as heart palpitations, chest pain and skin issues.
“A lot of people have symptoms of brain fog,” Dar said. “Some have chronic headaches and others still have difficulty with taste and smell. Some have joint pains. We try to address everything that we can.”
The number of patients they have treated at the clinic did go up during the recent wave of the pandemic due to word of mouth about the clinic’s existence.
Dar wants people who are suffering with long COVID in the area to know that they don’t have to travel to far-away places such Dallas or San Antonio unless it’s necessary.
“We never advertised and it was just limited to patients leaving Medical Center Hospital,” Dar said. “It’s grown by word of mouth. But we really want the community to know that it’s available. They don’t need to go out of town to get the kind of care that’s required for a lot of the patients who are requiring long term treatment or have symptoms that have persisted. We get patients who contracted COVID back in 2020. We’ve had patients who have had long-term COVID and we manage them. They don’t have to go to Dallas.”
Galindo said that some of their patients have been waiting for answers to their COVID questions for almost a year.
“When they come in here, if it’s any specific testing, we can get it all done in one day,” Galindo said. “Whether it’s an x-ray or a CT-scan, it can all be done in one visit. We set that up with Dr. Dar.”
Another item Galindo addressed was people with long-term COVID asking about when they will return to “normal”.
“I think the biggest thing is people have been asking ‘when do we get back to normal since the pandemic started?’” Galindo said. “Unfortunately, there are people who have been asking what normal will be like for their long term COVID symptoms. That’s why we partnered up. We want to give those people the answers and let them know what the normal is for them.”
Appointments are mandatory to be seen.
People can call 432-332-5557 to make an appointment. All insurances are accepted.
“The patients can call up and make an appointment,” Nurse Practitioner Janette Garcia said. “They just call and specify that they need a post COVID appointment. They don’t need a referral from their primary care.”
For more information, go to https://www.mchodessa.com/community/covid-19-news-updates/.
