Court says hospital worker didn’t prove lingering COVID symptoms
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An appeals court in West Virginia Thursday declined to give permanent partial disability to a woman who says her depression, anxiety, fatigue and shortness of breath were related to a COVID-19 infection she contracted at work in January 2021.
The woman, whose claim for COVID-19 was accepted by Princeton Community Hospital Association, saw several doctors in filing for disability, as documented in No. 23-ICA-336, filed in the Intermediate Court of Appeals of West Virginia.
In August 2021, a doctor specializing in sleep medicine and pulmonary disease opined she “did not have measurable whole person impairment related to the compensable injury” and that her “symptoms of fatigue were related to her poor sleep schedule and untreated sleep apnea.”
Later in 2021, she was seen by a psychiatrist who said she did not have any psychiatric conditions related to COVID-19 and, based on the American Medical Association’s Guides to the Evaluation of Permanent Impairment, “had no whole person impairment related to psychiatric conditions.”
In 2022, she was seen twice by an internist who said she was suffering from “post-COVID-19 chronic condition symptoms,” noting that her anxiety and depression “had been exacerbated by COVID-19” and that she began suffering from “shortness of breath after her diagnosis of COVID-19.”
In 2023, the West Virginia Workers’ Compensation Board of Review ruled that the woman did not provide “sufficient” medical evidence to prove permanent impairment.
The appeals court agreed, writing that the third doctor who opined that she had been suffering from long-term issues related to COVID-19 “did not offer an impairment rating or otherwise address any permanent impairment related to her compensable diagnosis.”
“Although (the worker) may feel that she is suffering from a permanent impairment related to her compensable injury, she has failed to offer any medical evidence supporting that conclusion,” the court wrote.
