Some doctors quietly secretly came up with a plan that if they ran out of ICU beds, then vaccinated patients would get priority. After this was reported, [likely because one, or more, of the doctors involved realized how morally and ethically corrupt this was, and spilled the beans to the newspaper] the doctors backed down. Good, but not good enough.
An idea like this should never have been even imagined in the first place.
So, someone goes to the hospital for whatever. The staff there check and find out the patient is unvaccinated and then give them a low priority for treatment?
I can guarantee, with Metaphysical Certitude™, if that happens, an angry parent or spouse will seek treatment for their sick ones at gunpoint. And making medical staff into the arbiter of who lives and who dies, based on social status, is one of the worst things that a society can do.
We must be able to trust doctors because we put our lives in their hands.
If doctors decide that “those people” don’t deserve the same level of care then that trust is destroyed and bad things will happen. Those medicos made the right decision this time because of public pressure after it was aired to the public.
But if crap-for-brains shenanigans like this continue, the medical community is going to rue the day such an idea popped into their pinheads.
North Texas doctor’s group retreats on policy saying vaccination status to be part of care decisions
This would have been a big change in health care, and it was all outlined in a memo obtained by the Watchdog.
Updated at 8:15 p.m. Aug. 19, 2021: After this story was posted, Dr. Mark Casanova gave interviews to local media and revised his story. He described the memo to the task force as a “homework assignment.” In a reversal, he told NBC-5 that vaccinations should not be among the factors hospitals should consider when making critical care triage decisions.
Original story published Aug. 19, 2021: North Texas doctors have quietly developed a plan that seeks to prepare for the possibility that due to the COVID-19 surge the region will run out of intensive-care beds.
If that happens, for the first time, doctors officially will be allowed to take vaccination status of sick patients into account along with other triage factors to see who gets a bed.
A copy of an internal memo written by Dr. Robert Fine, co-chair of the North Texas Mass Critical Care Guideline Task Force, was sent to members of the task force — and leaked to The Watchdog. It summarizes the latest work by the task force, a volunteer group that periodically updates medical guidelines for hospitals in our region. There are about 50 members from various hospitals in the group. Although their recommendations are not enforceable, the guidelines are generally followed.
The one-page summary memo is a “heads up” alert in the event things get worse, says Dr. Mark Casanova, director of clinical ethics for Baylor University Medical Center and a spokesperson for the task force. After Monday’s meeting, doctors had yet to make plans to inform the public.
“We’re trying to decide how to explain this addition to the public,” Casanova said.
But after studying the memo and interviewing doctors involved in the decision for two hours this week, The Watchdog can explain it to you.
Although doctors make triage decisions all the time, the proposed guideline addition is significant. Casanova predicted that if this change were copied by others medical care, for as long as the crisis persists, “is going to look and feel different for everybody who is alive right now in the United States of America.”
Yet a leading medical ethicist who studies how COVID-19 affects communities says he worries that adding vaccination status to the triage of patients will unfairly harm low-income people and people of color. These groups are historically disadvantaged when it comes to obtaining proper medical care.