Long Covid

As the intensity of COVID-19 pandemic fades, the Workers’ Compensation industry, as fate would have it, is faced with a new type of injury claim… ‘Long Covid’ and included in the lingering symptoms is what most of us have never seen before… anosmia and dysgeusia (loss of smell and taste). The conundrum is how to test for it and rate it. Since each claimant had a different smell problem, i.e., one can smell pizza and another can’t, I took the complaint at face value and rated the anosmia, per AMA Guides, 5th Edition, Section 11.4c ‘olfaction and taste.’ I was subsequently challenged on using a subjective complaint as substantial medical evidence and research on objective testing for anosmia indicated that the gold standard and recommended by the American College of Otolaryngology, was the University of Pennsylvania Smell ID Test – 40 items with a scoring system which justifies a whole person impairment rating for anosmia and has an index for detecting malingering. Ref: ‘University of Pennsylvania Smell Identification Test.