DWINDLING SUPPLIES

NYC Hospital Empowers ER Docs to ‘Withhold Futile Intubations’

The NYU Langone department of emergency medicine wants doctors to “think more critically” about who gets crucial ventilators.

Emergency-room doctors at a top academic medical center in New York City are being told they have “sole discretion” over which patients are placed on ventilators amid the coronavirus pandemic, The Wall Street Journal reports. The head of the department of emergency medicine at NYU Langone Health, Robert Femia, told the doctors in an email obtained by the Journal that “we do not have the luxury of time, data, or committees to help with our critical triage decisions.” Instead, he urged doctors to “think more critically about who we intubate” with ventilators becoming scarce in hard-hit New York City. The doctors “will have support in your decision making at the department and institutional level to withhold futile intubations,” Dr. Femia wrote.