#22 Have We Started Rationing Medical Care?
Desperate Tweet Seen Today:
I need a medical #oncology bed to transfer a 28 yo patient needing to urgently start chemotherapy. Not ICU, preferably #Texas. Please RT, DM.
In layman’s English, a 28-year-old patient with a new cancer diagnosis needs to start chemotherapy in the hospital, as an inpatient. The need was not for an ICU level bed but for inpatient intravenous oncology treatment. In a later tweet the physician reported that her team including case managers and administrators had been searching for a bed for six days.
Dozens of people replied with suggestions of where to look and for people of influence to contact? This is the fall-out of the latest wave of the pandemic. Less beds, staff out sick, staff resigned, higher level of transmissibility, so way more patients clogging the system. Who loses out? People with other diseases or diagnoses who cannot even begin or continue the treatment or procedures that they need.
The effect of this perfect storm is a type of rationing. It is not rationing in some sort of well-reasoned and agreed upon societal approach. No, the rationing of care comes down to luck and timing, the haves and the have-nots. The have-nots are more likely racial or ethnic minorities and rural populations. Unlucky enough to get a treatable form of cancer or active heart attack during overflow time at your local hospital? Sorry, you might be out of luck. The resources have been rationed to someone else.
Another tweet seen today:
Kid goes to school. School has inadequate ventilation, masking, and contact tracing. Kid gets Covid. Kid gives Covid to parent who is healthcare worker. Parent can’t work. Hospital understaffed. Patients suffer. Multiply in the thousands. This was predictable.
Are you part of a group that was unwilling or unable to get vaccinated against Covid? Are there hundreds or thousands of you in an area relatively underserved by the medical system? The likelihood of procuring hospital level care and ventilator capability is getting slimmer or slimmer. If you think you can take your chances with this disease because there are treatments available, you are taking an ill-advised strategy with your life. An ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure.
Tired of wearing a mask? Who isn’t? Flattening the curve and delaying the onset of infection is precisely the strategy employed to prevent emergency department overcrowding and to preserve medical resources. When another person in the public presents with the new onset of cancer or
or serious traumatic injury, medical staff, hospital beds, and resources must be available to meet the standard of care that we all expect. Inevitably, scarce resources get rationed. Masks, distancing, handwashing, vaccinating all work to reduce the spread and severity of Covid, not prevent it entirely.
I applaud the gutsy doctor who went all out to find a bed for her patient. The wonder of the internet and social media can absolutely be harnessed for good. A lot of useless finger-pointing and blame lay in the thread of responses. I hope that the team found a bed for the person in need. Likely a mother and father, wait in dire anxiety and worry about the fate of their adult child. Can he get the treatment he so desperately needs? Will your son or daughter be next?
