When Medical Care Is Futile, Other Patients Pay The Hidden Price

“Every day in intensive care units across the country, patients get aggressive, expensive treatment their caregivers know is not going to save their lives or make them better.
California researchers now report this so-called “futile” care has a hidden price: It’s crowding out other patients who could otherwise survive, recover and get back to living their lives.
Their study, in Critical Care Medicine, shows that patients who could benefit from intensive care in UCLA’s teaching hospital are having to wait hours and even days in the emergency room and in nearby community hospitals because ICU beds are occupied by patients receiving futile care. Some patients die waiting.
On one day out of every six, the researchers found, UCLA’s intensive care units contain at least one patient receiving useless care while other patients are unable to get into the ICU.
More than half the time, over a three-month period the researchers examined, the hospital’s intensive care units had a least one patient receiving futile care. The study shows the ripple effects of that futile care within the UCLA hospital and in surrounding hospitals where patients were waiting to be transferred.
“It is unjust when a patient is unable to access intensive care because ICU beds are occupied by patients who cannot benefit,” the authors write.
“The ethic of ‘first come, first served,’” they say, “is not only inefficient and wasteful, but it is contrary to medicine’s responsibility to apply health care resources to best serve society.””