Health care in Los Angeles

2020: Ambulances in Los Angeles stopped taking patients with a low chance of survival during the COVID-19 pandemic

In early January 2021, the Los Angeles Emergency Medical Assistance Agency issued an order to prevent ambulance crews from hospitalized patients with low chances of surviving. This step is associated with the overload of the health care system in the district due to the COVID-19 coronavirus pandemic.

Doctors in Los Angeles will not take patients who have stopped to the hospital, there are hearts no signs of breathing, movement, pulse or blood pressure: if resuscitation on the spot for at least 20 minutes did not give results, the dying person will be left at home.

Los Angeles County to stop hospitalizing sufferers with low chance of survival

This order issued by the District Emergency Medical Services is directed exclusively at patients who have suffered cardiac arrest and cannot be resuscitated in the field , "explains Dr. Jeffrey Smith of Cedars-Sinai Medical Center. - Each of these patients has a very low survival rate, even if they are taken to hospital.

According to the Los Angeles Times, ambulances with patients are forced to wait 8 hours for their turn for hospitalization, and hospitals are trying to discharge patients as soon as possible. Local authorities fear a new surge in coronavirus infections after the New Year holidays.

Los Angeles and some other major U.S. cities are experiencing acute shortages of hospital beds, ambulance crews and medical resources. Doctors are forced to take radical measures to somehow ease the load. For example, leaders in the Los Angeles health care system asked doctors to save oxygen and provide it only to patients whose blood oxygen saturation level drops below 90%.

According to Barbara Ferrer, director of the Los Angeles County Health Department, by early January 2021, one person dies of COVID-19 every 15 minutes.^[1]

1968

Road Clinic for Polio Inoculation, Los Angeles, 1960s.

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