Can You be Denied Use of Limited Medical Supplies, and Who Decides?
Given the spiking numbers of confirmed COVID-19 cases and limited medical supplies, the pandemic has brought medical ethics to the forefront. The McConnell Law Firm, a leading criminal defense law firm in Wichita, Kansas, has received various questions from concerned citizens. Many such questions relate to who gets access to the nation’s limited supply of mechanical breathing machines (also known as ventilators), and who gets to decide?
Medical Supply Shortages
According to the McConnell Law Firm founding attorney, Jonathan W. McConnell, “The World Medical Association provides in the Hippocratic Oath that physicians will not permit considerations of age, disease, or disability to intervene between their duty to their patient.”
However, as the coronavirus rapidly spreads throughout the nation and the world, concerns exist that the medical system will be overwhelmed. For example, doctors in Italy have already reported shortages of staff and equipment.
As COVID-19 deprives an individual of their ability to breathe, patients will die unless they receive life-sustaining oxygen from machines. Yet, fewer than 100,000 ventilators are in the United States. Although other machines can deliver oxygen to patients with mild or moderate forms of the disease, critically ill patients will require ventilators.
Physicians and Medical Personnel Forced to Decide
“In a worst-case scenario involving millions of cases coupled with ventilator shortages, physicians may have to decide who lives and who dies,” said McConnell. “Doctors will have to make difficult decisions about how to prioritize treatment of patients while protecting valuable resources. For example, medics in war often treat wounded soldiers who are more likely to return to heath rather than the soldiers with the gravest injuries.”
Similarly, emergency works may have to decide to give limited resources to patients who are more likely to recover. Guidelines in Italy state that, given the scarcity of resources, doctors should prioritize treatment for healthy individuals under the age of 80. Especially because no vaccine or medication yet exists to treat COVID-19, doctors must support patients with breathing machines to create time that will enable the patients to fight the virus.
Faced with swelling numbers of patients and shrinking beds and ventilators, hospitals may be unable to care for all patients. Additionally, “first come, first serve” often is not the best method. Instead, priority and consideration may demand that certain patients receive access to care. Should a worst-case-scenario arise, doctors and medical personnel will have to balance difficult decisions with serving the greatest need.
Courts Apprehensive to Intervene
“In situations of war and pandemics, courts are apprehensive to intervene to provide injunctive relief or mandate that physicians provide treatment to certain patients,” said McConnell. “Additionally, injunctive relief is often not a practical remedy in time-sensitive matters such as these because, by the time the court addresses the merits, the case is more likely than not moot. Instead, courts provide great deference to physicians who are on the frontlines in situations like this.”
What You Can Do
Nevertheless, in order to avoid strain on the medical system, federal and state officials are urging people to follow measures to prevent the spread of the respiratory virus. Implementing social distancing and eliminating nonessential travel will help to ease demands on hospitals so as to avoid any ethical situations where doctors must decide who receives care and who does not.
