A panel of advisers on Monday issued recommendations for new crisis treatment standards, advising doctors and hospitals on how they should decide which patients with COVID-19 get lifesaving care and which do not.
The report from a National Academies of Sciences committee offers a framework for treating patients during the COVID-19 crisis that shifts from saving individual patients to a focus on saving the most individuals possible.
It was issued at the request of US Assistant Secretary for Health Admiral Brett Giroir and US Assistant Secretary of Preparedness and Response Robert Kadlec.
The new Crisis Standards of Care guidelines come as the US faces the prospect of rationing ventilators and other essential equipment to cope with a surge of severely ill patients infected with the new respiratory virus that is projected to kill between 100,000 and 200,000 people in the US.
In the report, the panel says that in spite of efforts to forestall the virus, it expects “a growing number of hospitals will face medical needs that outpace the existing supply of ventilators, protective equipment and other essentials, as well as the rate that enhanced supply can be produced, acquired and put into place. These circumstances will require a shift to Crisis Standards of Care.”
The panel says there is “an imminent need to prepare for difficult decisions about allocating limited resources, triaging patients to receive life-saving care and minimizing the negative impacts of delivering care under crisis conditions.”
First issued in 2009, Crisis Standards of Care were used sporadically to help doctors respond to hurricanes Katrina and Sandy, and doctors were preparing to use them in the 2009 H1N1 flu pandemic, but never did, experts said.
They characterized the government’s request for an updated report — tailored to the COVID-19 pandemic — as both sobering and responsible.
“It’s important that we have these ahead of time so that doctors don’t have to decide these things on the fly,” said Amesh Adalja, an infectious disease specialist and senior scholar at the John Hopkins University Center for Health Security.
“This is serious business,” said William Schaffner, an infectious disease expert at Vanderbilt University Medical Center. “If it’s not done, no one gets good care.”
According to the National Academies, the standards shift the focus from what is best for the individual to what can help save the most lives, especially when equipment, staffing and materials are in short supply.
They do not dictate which choices should be made, but provide a framework for making them.
They also protect physicians from malpractice lawsuits, said Lawrence Gostin, an expert in global health law at Georgetown University, who helped write the original guidelines in 2009.
Gostin said individual states were responsible for setting malpractice standards, but in a pandemic, the hope is that the federal government would implement the standards nationally, which would then be passed along to states and then to local hospitals.
Gostin said the fact that US officials requested the report signals “an urgency in trying to prepare hospitals for acute shortages, which will have implications for deciding who can live and who can die.”
Under normal standards of care, doctors in the US have a duty to provide the highest-quality treatment available.
“If someone is in respiratory arrest and the standard of care is a ventilator and there aren’t enough, doctors can be sued,” Gostin said.
Alta Charo, a bioethicist at the University of Wisconsin, said shifting to crisis standards allowed states or healthcare providers to relax or change certain rules, such as using medical devices in ways they were not originally approved for, if they offer a “better-than-nothing option.”
A key principle is that doctors never withhold care solely because of age, disability, race or gender.
“These are critical life or death decisions. Doctors and hospitals shouldn’t be making them themselves,” Gostin said.
A fire caused by a burst gas pipe yesterday spread to several homes and sent a fireball soaring into the sky outside Malaysia’s largest city, injuring more than 100 people. The towering inferno near a gas station in Putra Heights outside Kuala Lumpur was visible for kilometers and lasted for several hours. It happened during a public holiday as Muslims, who are the majority in Malaysia, celebrate the second day of Eid al-Fitr. National oil company Petronas said the fire started at one of its gas pipelines at 8:10am and the affected pipeline was later isolated. Disaster management officials said shutting the
DITCH TACTICS: Kenyan officers were on their way to rescue Haitian police stuck in a ditch suspected to have been deliberately dug by Haitian gang members A Kenyan policeman deployed in Haiti has gone missing after violent gangs attacked a group of officers on a rescue mission, a UN-backed multinational security mission said in a statement yesterday. The Kenyan officers on Tuesday were on their way to rescue Haitian police stuck in a ditch “suspected to have been deliberately dug by gangs,” the statement said, adding that “specialized teams have been deployed” to search for the missing officer. Local media outlets in Haiti reported that the officer had been killed and videos of a lifeless man clothed in Kenyan uniform were shared on social media. Gang violence has left
US Vice President J.D. Vance on Friday accused Denmark of not having done enough to protect Greenland, when he visited the strategically placed and resource-rich Danish territory coveted by US President Donald Trump. Vance made his comment during a trip to the Pituffik Space Base in northwestern Greenland, a visit viewed by Copenhagen and Nuuk as a provocation. “Our message to Denmark is very simple: You have not done a good job by the people of Greenland,” Vance told a news conference. “You have under-invested in the people of Greenland, and you have under-invested in the security architecture of this
Japan unveiled a plan on Thursday to evacuate around 120,000 residents and tourists from its southern islets near Taiwan within six days in the event of an “emergency”. The plan was put together as “the security situation surrounding our nation grows severe” and with an “emergency” in mind, the government’s crisis management office said. Exactly what that emergency might be was left unspecified in the plan but it envisages the evacuation of around 120,000 people in five Japanese islets close to Taiwan. China claims Taiwan as part of its territory and has stepped up military pressure in recent years, including
RSS