A public health emergency such as an influenza pandemic will lead to shortages of mechanical ventilators, critical care beds, and other potentially life saving treatments. This will raise difficult decisions about who will and will not receive these scarce resources. Existing recommendations reflect a narrow utilitarian perspective in which allocation decisions are based primarily on patients' chances of survival to hospital discharge. Certain patient groups, such as the elderly and those with functional impairment, are denied access to potentially life saving treatments based on selective application of additional allocation criteria. We analyze the ethical principles that could guide allocation and propose an allocation strategy that incorporates and balances multiple morally relevant considerations, including saving the most lives, maximizing the number of “life-years” saved, and prioritizing those who have had the least chance to live through life's stages. We also argue that these principles are relevant to all patients and that justice requires that these principles be applied evenly, rather than selectively to the aged, functionally impaired, and those with certain chronic conditions. We discuss strategies to genuinely engage the public in setting the priorities that will guide allocation of scarce life sustaining treatments during a public health emergency.
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