Health equity and distributive justice considerations in critical care resource allocation

Abstract

Amid the possibility of resource shortages in health care during a public health crisis, guiding principles established by several groups advocate for allocating life-sustaining treatments on the basis of a patient's chances of survival, resulting in an approach of saving the most lives possible.1 To assist in this approach, many triage frameworks use acute illness scores to predict short-term mortality.1 The sequential organ failure assessment (SOFA)2 score has received attention as a mortality prediction tool during the COVID-19 pandemic and is likely to be used by hospitals in some manner as a triage tool.