As cases continue to spike in the United States that is resulting in hospitals reaching full capacity, intensive care units in Southern California’s medical system is not being able to provide critical medical care to people.
Many hospitals are preparing for the possibility of rationing care in the coming weeks as the number of patients exceeds their staffs’ abilities to care for them, wherein the guidelines call for a shift in mindset that is unfamiliar to many medical providers, Los Angeles Times reported.
The overflow of patients in ICU (Intensive Care Unit) and other critical wards keep the patients on ambulances for as long as eight hours until space is available.
According to Los Angeles Times, there is hope for the arrival of an army of additional medical professionals who can greatly expand intensive care unit availability through the end of the year.
The goal during the ongoing crisis is to save people as much as possible, patients with less likely to survive will not receive the same level of care which others will get. Doctors will strategize to keep people save as many as possible.
“Some compromise of the standard of care is unavoidable; it is not that an entity, system, or locale chooses to limit resources, it is that the resources are clearly not available to provide care in a regular manner,” Los Angeles Times quoted a document obtained by the newspaper that highlights how to allocate resources in a crisis situation was recently circulated among doctors at the four hospitals run by Los Angeles County.
“In an email that the guidelines were not in place as of Friday night but that they were essential to develop given the surge has arrived and “the worst is yet to come,” The Los Angeles Times quoted Dr Christina Ghaly, LA County Health Services Director as saying.
“We have enough beds, supplies, and equipment for now, but we don’t have enough trained staff for the number of patients who need care. We have brought in new staff, retrained and redeployed staff from other areas of the system, and have requested additional resources from the state,” Ghaly said adding “But these measures are not anticipated to be enough to meet the continuously escalating number of patients that are presenting across the county for care.”
Across the nation, it has already become harder to get admitted to the hospital with COVID-19 symptoms today than it was a couple of months ago, Dr Kirsten Bibbins-Domingo, UC San Francisco chair of the department of epidemiology and biostatistics said.
“When hospitals start to get full … we subtly change our thresholds for admitting someone to the hospital,” Bibbins-Domingo said.
