The magnitude of Covid-19 patients filling hospital beds is avoidable, doctors say. But in some hospitals, patients with or without coronavirus are paying the price.
“We are at the point where not every patient in need will get the care we might wish we could give,” said Dr. Shelly Harkins, chief medical officer of St. Peter’s Health in Helena, Montana.
It’s one of the latest hospitals to resort to crisis standards of care, meaning emergency medicine personnel must ration care.
In those situations, “people who come in in cardiac arrest may not get CPR, and patients who would otherwise get hospitalized may be sent home with loved ones who are going to be scared and not have full capacity to take care of them,” said emergency physician Dr. Megan Ranney, associate dean of the School of Public Health at Brown University.