What Corona has taught on the allocation of scarce critical care resources during health system crises

Abstract

Health care crises can lead to a pronounced regional, national and even supranational discrepancy between the need for public health measures and medical care and the ability of the health care systems to provide it.
Among others, such need can refer to food and shelter, personnel, pharmaceuticals, equipment, and communication or transportation capacity. Specifically, the COVID-19 pandemic has spread worldwide with almost unprecedented pace and impact since December 2019 and has taken a toll of millions of patients afflicted and several hundreds of thousands deceased. Health care
systems worldwide were confronted with enormous challenges, but structures and processes deemed necessary to meet them were not provided throughout. Rather, in many regions and even countries, physicians and nurses were unable to treat all patients in need equally appropriately.