[Answered]: A pandemic respiratory virus has gripped the…

A pandemic respiratory virus has gripped the United States, including the area served by Community Healthcare Trust Incorporated (Community), a large, integrated health system that includes several area hospitals, multiple specialty and subspecialty groups, and primary care clinics. The best models and estimates regarding the pandemic are dire. Although uncertain, they suggest that infections will peak in 18 days and that, if so, patient need for critical resources, such as ventilators, could exceed the current total capacity. As a result, Community has to plan for the worst while hoping to increase capacity and that state and local public health measures and “shelter in place” orders can stem the tide of infections. Community has decided to create a team to develop institutional policy on how to allocate scarce resources in the event the pandemic is as bad as models predict. Dr Giles, an internal medicine physician and ethicist for Community, has been asked to join this team and lead the drafting of the policy. Dr Giles just got off the phone with Dr Stead, a critical care colleague and friend in a smaller community in another state. Dr Stead was distressed, relaying that staffing is strapped, as a number of employees are home ill, on quarantine, caring for ill relatives, or engaged in childcare because of school closures intended to prevent spread of disease. Almost every intensive care unit bed is occupied by a patient receiving mechanical ventilation, and new patients are arriving regularly at the emergency department (ED) in respiratory distress. Dr Stead noted that among the patients currently in his ICU whose condition is most dire is the grandmother of the hospital’s director of social work. A half dozen of her friends and family members were in the lobby wanting to go to her bedside; meanwhile, he just evaluated an elderly leader in his church and a 24- year-old patient with asthma and severe viral pneumonia for possible admission from the ED. The elderly man’s brother (a health professional) keeps mentioning the Emergency Medical Treatment & Labor Act (EMTALA). Dr Giles can only imagine what his hospital soon may be facing. 5. When developing a policy such as this what does the physician have to consider? An individual patient? The community? Friends and family? How famous a patient is ? How does the ethical principle chosen to guide the policy determine action? 6. Is “maximize the number of people who will recover” the guiding principle? Or is it assist the youngest to survive? What are the guiding principles? 7. How do you assure that there is no discrimination in allocating resources? 8. Do you feel this statement is truthful: A patient that has high likelihood of harm and low likelihood of benefit so low that they should not be resuscitated”? Why or why not 9. Describe the process of “Triage” in determining resources. How is that utilized currently? 10. W