KANSAS CITY, Mo. — Though Missouri and Kansas are weeks away from hitting their expected peaks with COVID-19 cases, hospitals are deciding how life-saving resources will be distributed during that time.
Dr. Tarris Rosell, Rosemary Flanigan Chair at the Center for Practical Bioethics, told 41 Action News on Sunday that hospitals in the metro are developing a point system to determine who receives a life-saving ventilator and who doesn't.
"Is there heart failure, liver, some other sorts of failure? All of that would matter," Rosell said. "What we want to do is, is make them clinical criteria, not social worth, even social usefulness."
Hospitals in the metro are turning to their respective states for guidance.
Medical professionals also are seeking advice from their peers. The New England Journal of Medicine recently published an article, "The Toughest Triage — Allocating Ventilators in a Pandemic" for doctors about to face these decisions.
"It comes down to giving it to those people where we're either going to save the most number of lives or the number of life years. And yes, it does mean that people with other severe illness will receive a lower priority score," Dr. Robert Truog with Boston Children's Hospital, one of the authors, said in an interview with CNN.
Rosell said he believes now is the time for people to prepare for the worst-case scenario.
"We're going to be looking at every patient on their own merits and on their own wishes to see, one, will this work? If it won't work? We probably shouldn't do it, and also, does this patient want this intervention? CPR? or something else?" Rosell said.
He added that doctors in the Kansas City metro area are under another pressure.
"There's concern about liability risk," Rosell said. "Will I be sued when I'm doing the best I can, but somebody ends up dying? Worry about that risk, and so I'm hoping that the governor in both states makes a declaration of legal immunity for those who are operating under crisis standards of care and are just doing their best."
