Remember death panels?
Good times.
Hospitals postponing thousands of surgeries amid onslaught of COVID and other patients - The Boston Globe
And on Thursday, UMass Memorial Medical Center, the largest health system in Central Massachusetts, suspended all surgeries and medical procedures for conditions not considered life-threatening until further notice.
The situation is so bad that its forcing hospital administrators to make heartbreaking choices to limit all but the most urgent surgeries and procedures. This extends even to some cancer surgeries, forcing doctors to weigh which tumors are growing faster and which slow enough to postpone care.
Dr. Ron Walls, Mass General Brighams chief operating officer, said hospitals are now fielding calls from patients begging to be put back on the list for surgery.
This is really, really hard for patients, he said.
...
Starting Monday, we will postpone 2,200 [surgeries] a week to make the best possible use of the staff we have, Walls said. That translates to roughly 40 percent of the systems total surgical procedures.