Interdisciplinary Treatment for Survivors of Critical Illness due to COVID-19: Expanding the Post-Intensive Care Recovery Model and Impact on Psychiatric Outcomes

Background: Post-intensive care unit recovery programs for survivors of critical illness related to COVID-19 remain limited, ever-evolving, and under active investigation. Mental health professionals have an emerging role within this multidisciplinary care model. Objective: This article ex-plores the design and implementation of an intensive care unit follow-up clinic in New Orleans during the era of COVID-19. Survivors of a critical illness due to COVID-19 were offered multidisciplinary outpatient treatment and systematic psychological screening up to 6 months after the initial clinic visit. Methods: We implemented a prospective, observational study at a post-intensive care syndrome (PICS) clinic for survivors of a critical illness related to COVID-19 embedded within an academic Veterans Affairs hospital. Our team identified patients at high risk of PICS and offered them a clinic consultation. Patients were pro-vided the following interventions: review of the critical care course, medication reconciliation, primary care, psycho-pharmacotherapy, psychotherapy, and subspecialty re-ferrals. Patients were followed up at 1-to 3-month intervals. Psychological symptom screening was conducted with Posttraumatic Stress Disorder Checklist for the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders -Fifth Edition, 9-question Patient Health Questionnaire, and 7-item Generalized Anxiety Disorder assessments. Results: Seventy-seven total patients were identified to be at high risk of PICS from March to November 2020, and of this cohort, 44 (57.14%) survived their COVID-19 hospitali-zations. Of the surviving 44 patients contacted, 21 patients established care in the PICS clinic and returned for at least 1 follow-up visit. At initial evaluation, 66.7% of patients demonstrated clinically meaningful symptoms of post -traumatic stress disorder. At 3-month follow-up, 9.5% of patients showed significant post-traumatic stress disorder symptoms. Moderate-to-severe symptoms of anxiety were present in 38.1% of patients at initial evaluation and in 4.8% of patients at 3 months. Moderate-to-severe symptoms of depression were present in 33.4% and 4.8% of patients at initial visit and at 3 months, respectively. Conclusions: A PICS clinic serves as a posthospitalization model of care for COVID-19 intensive care unit survivors. This type of health care infrastructure expands the continuum of care for patients enduring the consequences of a critical illness. We identified a high prevalence of post-traumatic stress, anxiety, and depres-sion, along with other post-intensive care unit complica-tions warranting an intervention. The prevalence of distressing psychological symptoms diminished across all domains by 3 months.