Detroit News:
Henry Ford Health System has prepared a policy for how its hospitals will determine which patients get to use ventilators should need surpass availability.
A letter circulated online Thursday said patients “will be assessed for eligibility” for ventilator support based on the extent of their symptoms, underlying health conditions and advanced directives.
That letter was in preparation for a "worst case scenario," but has not been enacted as policy, the Detroit-based five-hospital system said in a statement.
The hospital system has not reached capacity at any of its locations, nor has it reached the limit on ventilators at any of its hospitals, said Brenda Craig, vice president of the health system’s integrated communications.
“The letter is part of a larger internal document that unfortunately was shared publicly,” Craig said. “It would only be something used in a worst case scenario, and we are not in one right now at any of our hospitals.”
With a pandemic, we must be prepared for worst case. With collective wisdom from our industry, we crafted a policy to provide guidance for making difficult patient care decisions. We hope never to have to apply them. We will always utilize every resource to care for our patients.— Henry Ford News (@HenryFordNews) March 27, 2020
But remember - hospitals are traditionally very good at things like Risk Assessment and Risk Management and Contingency Planning.
And they don't waste resources on planning for things without having assigned it some fair probability of eventuation.
We're not ready for this shit, and it's probably going to get pretty fucking bad pretty fucking soon.
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