Course: Racial Equity in Crisis Standards of Care—Reassuring Data or Reason for Concern?
CME Credits: 1.00
Released: 2021-03-19
The coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic has led to more than 956,000 hospitalizations in the United States as of February 5, 2021, bringing hospital systems close to exhausting available critical care resources during surges in infection rates. In an attempt to ensure the fair allocation of scarce resources, hospital systems have developed crisis standards of care (CSC) guidelines. Health equity experts have raised concerns that indiscriminate implementation of these guidelines will exacerbate racial and ability-based inequities that have plagued our current health care system. In their study, Gershengorn et al sought to determine whether the application of proposed CSC guidelines during a surge of COVID-19 cases at 2 urban hospitals in Miami, Florida, would be associated with an unanticipated increase in resource allocation disparities across race and ethnicity. Reviewing 5613 patient-days of data from 1127 patients who required or were at risk of requiring mechanical ventilation during admission at their hospitals, they found no association of race or ethnicity with the priority scores that guided their CSC resource allocation policy.
Educational Objective
To identify the key insights or developments described in this article
View Full Course