New York hospitals would use LOTTERIES for ventilators in shortage

State emergency plans to ration ventilators if the coronavirus pandemic worsens are raising thorny ethical questions, as New York considers lotteries for access to the machines and other states contemplate denying them to those with mental disabilities.

The White House says that as yet, no one has been denied a ventilator who needed one. But as the crisis deepens, several states are putting grim plans in place to ration the vital machines.

In New York, the state's ethical guidelines for allocating ventilators in a pandemic call for devoting scarce resources to the patients who are most likely to be saved.

However, the New York report concluded that in the rare case when multiple patients are equally likely to recover, but there are limited resources to help them, hospitals should 'utilize "random selection" (e.g., lottery) methods.'

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