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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."
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.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday January 06 2021, @12:57AM (10 children)
I am fascinated by this supposed link between a preference for incremental changes in government rather than radical, and a desire to ration access to health care by funding sources.
This is the first I've ever heard of such a link. Would you care to explain your analysis?
Oh, and if by "conservative" you really meant "hypothetical randian extremist strawman" that could be worth pointing out as well.
(Score: 2) by helel on Wednesday January 06 2021, @01:20AM (6 children)
To be fair, by "conservative" I mean anyone who favors a market-based approach to health care. Treatment for those that can afford it.
Please, feel free to share the factors you feel should be used when determining who receives first access to limited supplies, and any factors (such as being unable to pay) that should disqualify them before consideration.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday January 06 2021, @01:59AM (5 children)
How about medical opinion? Regular triage processes?
As for market-based, I'm not aware of many people outside the anarchist fringe who disapprove of a social safety net. It seems to be a pretty strong point of consensus, actually. Even night watchman state libertarians tend to speak in favour of functions with strong externalities such as national defense, logistics and public health.
So basically, you're barking at anarchists up a tree.
You bark hard, my friend. Bark at those anarchists.
(Score: 2) by helel on Wednesday January 06 2021, @02:13AM (3 children)
Thats... Uhh... Do you know what triage is?
And if I understand correctly you don't see that ability to pay should play any role in deciding who gets care and who does not? Random houseless individual comes in off the street should have the same access to care that Bill Gates or the president of the United States does?
I admire your idealism.
(Score: 1) by khallow on Wednesday January 06 2021, @05:03AM (2 children)
Eventually, ability to pay matters because no matter how deep-pocketed the society is, you can demand more health care than it can afford to pay.
(Score: 2) by helel on Wednesday January 06 2021, @12:48PM (1 child)
The AC suggested that only medical expertise should play a role in distributing medical care. Yes, some treatments may be limited due to costs or supply constraints and in those cases medical opinion would see no difference between a houseless individual and the richest person in the country. Whoever has greater need, greater odds of success, and more years of life to gain gets it and no amount of money should change the decision, according to the AC.
I can only imagine how upset the AC is with the current state of affairs where insulin, a drug we can easily produce enough of for everyone that needs it, is rationed by monetary income such that people routinely die for its lack [snopes.com].
(Score: 1) by khallow on Wednesday January 06 2021, @09:20PM
And the rich person, should they exhaust the above cost/supply constraints, is simply going to go out of that system to get the medical care they want. As I noted before, money will make a difference.
They're also rationed by artificial supply constraints which the bleeding hearts such as Mr. AC have had a hand in creating. After all, we can't have the Alec Smiths of the world killed by substandard/unregulated insulin.
(Score: 2) by sjames on Wednesday January 06 2021, @03:25AM
If only. The GOP regularly attempts to sabotage then cancel anything resembling the social safety net.
(Score: 2) by sjames on Wednesday January 06 2021, @01:54AM (2 children)
The link is clear. The current mercenary style medicine DOES ration care based on ability to pay. That is somewhat tempered by things like medicare and medicaid.
The conservative as champion of incremental change is long dead. They now propose radical changes towards privatization while opposing incremental moves towards a social safety net. They tend to want to go "back" to some fictional never-was state and no proposal is too radical if it does that.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday January 06 2021, @02:01AM (1 child)
It sounds as if you're not talking about conservatives, but about radical reactionaries.
Radical: wanting to make big, sweeping changes.
Reactionaries: wanting to go back to some past state (real or imagined).
If you're going to insist on using the terms of political science/political economics, how about using them to describe what the connotation of the words addresses? Maybe even for a trial period of a month or three?
(Score: 2) by sjames on Wednesday January 06 2021, @02:58AM
I am talking about the current GOP which calls itself "conservative" for hysterical raisins.
I use that term because that is the term used on the news, in political commentary, and by the GOP itself.