Indiana Guidelines Would Let Patients Die During Flu Pandemic

Some cancer patients, heart attack sufferers and burn victims would be removed from ventilators and left to die if pandemic flu patients overwhelmed Indiana’s hospitals.
The goal would be to save the most lives as possible, according the Indiana State Department of Health.
But a draft copy of Indiana’s “Altered Standards of Care” guidelines reveals that if faced with overwhelming demand, Indiana hospitals would establish what amount to “death panels.”
A “triage review officer” would decide who gets access to hospital staff and equipment and, likely, who lives and who will die.
In a pandemic emergency, hospital patients and those seeking care would be scored every day using a system known as the Sequential Organ Failure Assessment. The same system would be used across the state to ensure accountability and gain public confidence, according to the August 2008 draft guidelines...

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