MONTGOMERY, Ala. (AP) — Alabama agreed to remove old ventilator triage guidelines that advocates said discriminated against the elderly and disabled, the U.S Department of Health and Human Services announced Wednesday.
The difficult decisions about who could get a ventilator if there aren’t enough for all who need one has taken on new urgency as intensive care units prepare for surges in patients amid the COVID-19 pandemic. Federal officials cautioned states and doctors that civil rights laws still apply, and that decisions on who gets a ventilator should not be based on stereotypes about a person’s worth.
The Alabama document, created a decade ago during the H1N1 pandemic, included factors such as profound intellectual disabilities and severe dementia in weighing against providing the potentially life-saving treatment.
The Alabama Department of Public Health said a new plan had since been created, but federal investigators expressed concern that the older guidelines were “still available on some state webpages, and it was not clear whether any of their potentially problematic provisions could still be applied under the new guidelines.”
Alabama then agreed to remove all links to the outdated document, and to keep publicly clarifying that those guidelines don’t apply.