Hammer, Sabine, Monaca, Clara, Hoelz, Annika et al. · Zeitschrift fur Evidenz, Fortbildung und Qualitat im Gesundheitswesen · 2025 · DOI
This study asked 264 long COVID patients about their experiences with doctors and healthcare services. Most patients reported that healthcare providers don't understand their condition, often dismiss it as psychological, and sometimes recommend treatments that make them sicker. Patients felt stigmatized and unsupported, with some waiting up to two years just to see a specialist.
This study documents systematic barriers to care and evidence of iatrogenic harm caused by psychosomatic framing and inappropriate therapeutic recommendations—findings directly applicable to ME/CFS, which overlaps significantly with long COVID. The data provide crucial validation of patient experiences and highlight urgent needs for provider education and specialized care infrastructure that would benefit both populations.
This qualitative study does not establish causation between specific treatments and health deterioration, nor does it quantify the prevalence of these barriers across all healthcare systems. The findings are specific to German healthcare and patient populations willing to report to this system, so results may not generalize to other countries or healthcare models.
About the PEM badge: “PEM required” means post-exertional malaise was an explicit required diagnostic criterion for participant inclusion in this study — not that PEM was studied, observed, or discussed. Studies using criteria that do not require PEM (e.g. Fukuda, Oxford) are tagged “PEM not required”. How the atlas works →
The first block is for the primary paper and is the citation you should use in research work. The atlas-snapshot line only applies if you are specifically referring to this atlas’s reading of the paper on the date shown.
Primary citation
Hammer, Sabine, Monaca, Clara, Hoelz, Annika, Tannheimer, Markus, Baumgart, Saskia Huckels-, Dornieden, Kathrin, et al. (2025). ["Ultimately, you are on your own." A qualitative analysis of barriers to health care from the perspective of patients with long COVID].. Zeitschrift fur Evidenz, Fortbildung und Qualitat im Gesundheitswesen. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.zefq.2025.01.006
BibTeX
@article{mecfsatlas-hammer-2025-ultimately-you,
author = {Hammer, Sabine and Monaca, Clara and Hoelz, Annika and Tannheimer, Markus and Baumgart, Saskia Huckels- and Dornieden, Kathrin and Lüttel, Dagmar and Rall, Marcus and Müller, Hardy},
title = {["Ultimately, you are on your own." A qualitative analysis of barriers to health care from the perspective of patients with long COVID].},
journal = {Zeitschrift fur Evidenz, Fortbildung und Qualitat im Gesundheitswesen},
year = {2025},
doi = {10.1016/j.zefq.2025.01.006},
note = {PubMed: 40021380},
url = {https://www.mecfsatlas.com/evidence/hammer-2025-ultimately-you},
}Atlas snapshot reference
ME/CFS Atlas. Generator v1 / Scanner v1.4 / policy v0.1. Accessed 2026-05-27. https://www.mecfsatlas.com/evidence/hammer-2025-ultimately-you
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