Hospital low on oxygen, fears being forced to 'choose who lives or dies'. (KIMA)
YAKIMA, Wash. (KIMA) — Yakima Valley Memorial Hospital says it is afraid of soon hitting a point where it would have to choose who lives or who dies.
The Yakima, Wash. hospital is already having to ration its resources, such as oxygen.
Memorial is monitoring its oxygen consumption and said things could take a turn where it is saved for those the staff knows it can save.Dr. Marty Brueggemann with Memorial says a number of factors could lead the hospital to this point, including staffing shortage getting worse, an increase of COVID-19 patients or more patients who need ventilators.
He added the hospital is getting closer to what’s called "crisis standards of care," which means if you go to the hospital, you might not be chosen to get the care you need.
They may decide that we don’t have the resources to care for you and your chance of survival is low, so we’re not gonna ask if you want to resuscitate or not, we’re just not gonna be able to do it," Brueggemann said.
Additionally, if Memorial reaches this standard of care, they will not have anywhere else to send patients or have any oxygen left.
Dr. Brueggemann said this means, “somebody somewhere is gonna get taken off oxygen and given pain medicine to kind of give them a peaceful death.”
As of now, on average, Memorial sees 30 to 40 patients in the waiting room throughout most of the day, with 10 percent of those leaving without ever being seen by a nurse or a doctor.
Brueggemann said:
That’s a dangerous situation because those patients may have medical problems that require emergency attention that we can’t get to because of the volumes.
Memorial is currently watching its oxygen consumption very closely, adding that one patient’s oxygen requirement rose to a level that pushed the entire unit over its limit recently.
Out
of the 64 Memorial employees that are out due to COVID-related reasons,
11 of those are registered nurses while 10 of them are nursing
assistants.
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