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posted by martyb on Tuesday January 05 2021, @07:53PM   Printer-friendly
from the so-it-has-come-to-this dept.

LA Paramedics Told Not To Transport Some Patients With Low Chance Of Survival:

The Los Angeles County Emergency Medical Services Agency issued a directive Monday that ambulance crews should only administer bottled oxygen to patients whose oxygen saturation levels fall below 90%.

In a separate memo from the county's EMS Agency, paramedic crews have been told not to transfer patients who experience cardiac arrest unless spontaneous circulation can be restored on the scene.

Both measures announced Monday, which were issued by the agency's medical director, Dr. Marianne Gausche-Hill, were taken in an attempt to get ahead of an expected surge to come following the winter holidays.

Many hospitals in the region "have reached a point of crisis and are having to make very tough decisions about patient care," Dr. Christina Ghaly, the LA County director of health services said at a briefing Monday.

[...] "We do not believe that we are yet seeing the cases that stemmed from the Christmas holiday," Ghaly added. "This, sadly, and the cases from the recent New Year's holiday, is still before us, and hospitals across the region are doing everything they can to prepare."

'We Are Not Abandoning Resuscitation': LA County Healthcare Leader Speaks Out After Memo Raises Concerns:

Los Angeles County hospitals are so inundated, officials said they're just trying to provide the best care they can for the people who need it.

The memo sent out on December 28 by the medical director of L.A. County's Emergency Medical Services agency, Dr. Marianne Gausche-Hill, addressed how first responders should treat stroke and heart attack patients, saying a patient should be treated at the scene first and have a pulse during resuscitation before transporting them to the hospital.

[...] The medical director of L.A. County's Emergency Services Agency, Dr. Marianne Gausche-Hill, assured CBS2 that officials continue to do all they can to save patients' lives at the scene and the hospital, as they always have.

"We are not abandoning resuscitation," Gausche-Hill said. "We are absolutely doing best practice resuscitation and that is do it in the field, do it right away... What we're asking is that — which is slightly different than before — is that we are emphasizing the fact that transporting these patients arrested leads to very poor outcomes.


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  • (Score: 1) by hemocyanin on Wednesday January 06 2021, @03:15AM

    by hemocyanin (186) on Wednesday January 06 2021, @03:15AM (#1095443) Journal

    No -- I was going for bitter or maybe exasperated. These people are apparently completely tone deaf and destructive. If the hospitals are overrun, all they do is raise questions about whether that is a fact -- you know, if your goal is to spread the word that HC providers are so busy and the covid bodies are piled out into hallways and all that, dancing around in an empty hospital is lousy messaging. Considering the misinformation we've been served though, such as "don't wear masks, they are useless, and we need them all for HC providers" or "rioting is more important than social distancing" -- well, by the end of this covid thing people are going to trust used car salesmen more than public health officials, doctors, and nurses. And probably rightly so.