The AAMC and eight other health care organizations issued a statement on Dec. 18 calling for immediate action to implement crisis standards of care (CSC) during the current COVID-19 surge. The signers included the National Academy of Medicine, the American Medical Association, the American Nurses Association, the National Medical Association, the National League for Nursing, the American Association of Colleges of Nursing, the Johns Hopkins Center for Health Security, and National Council of State Boards of Nursing.
The groups urged governors, health departments, hospitals, and other health care sector partners to “take immediate action to save lives and fairly allocate limited resources.” They emphasized that “every action possible should be taken now to mitigate the need to operate under crisis conditions. Failure to act will inevitably mean more lives lost, lasting damage to our fragile health care system, and deepened scars of health inequity.”
The groups also outlined specific key actions that governors, state health departments, and hospitals and health systems can take to mitigate the crisis.
The AAMC issued a statement on Nov. 30 calling for the nation’s medical schools and teaching hospitals and health systems to prepare to implement their CSC and “to assist and coordinate implementation of these guidelines with their states, communities, other hospitals, and providers over the next several months.”