Policy

Ethical Challenges: Protecting patients and providers The COVID-19 pandemic poses significant ethical challenges for health care professionals, including nurses, who represent the largest share of the global health care workforce. While facing the danger of infection is an accepted part Read More

This New England Journal of Medicine article argues that “color-blind” crisis standards of care (CSC) plans fail to account for disproportionate burdens on communities of color and risk exacerbating existing health inequities. Existing state CSC plans often explicitly reject consideration Read More

This article assesses ethical challenges during a public health emergency that necessitates shifting from optimizing care for every individual to care that saves the most lives. The article focuses on three ethical problems from the perspective of cardiovascular care: halting Read More

This article reviews existing guidance for ICU triage decisions during a public health emergency that overwhelms available ICU capacity and proposes an algorithm intended to facilitate rapid implementation and assessment. The authors propose a triage algorithm intended to prioritize saving Read More

This article is a companion manuscript to the American Geriatrics Society (AGS) official position statement on resource allocation strategies and age-related considerations, developed by the AGS Ethics Committee in collaboration with others. The AGS position statement relies on a view Read More

This article reports the results of focus group and key informant interviews with clinicians regarding changes in their roles, identities, duties, and decision-making autonomy that may result from the need to implement crisis standards of care (CSC) during disaster triage, Read More

This editorial compares approaches in several European nations to triage of scarce critical care resources, such as ventilators. Specifically, it summarizes and contrasts provisions from plans adopted in Italy, Switzerland, Austria, Germany, the United Kingdom, and Belgium across a set Read More

This United Nations policy brief addresses the impact of COVID-19 on pre-existing inequalities and the need for inclusion of persons with disabilities. The brief emphasizes the need to ensure that persons with disabilities are fully included in COVID-19 response and Read More

This article from Bloomberg Law discusses some of the ways federal and state privacy, security and reimbursement rules have changed to accommodate telehealth and expand access to services during the pandemic, and discusses some of the steps health systems will Read More

This forthcoming article (currently in pre-proof) discusses scarce resource allocation planning for a public health emergency with a specific focus on extracorporeal membrane oxygenation (ECMO), used to treat severe respiratory failure. The authors note that ECMO has only recently been Read More