Intensive Care: Older People

(asked on 26th October 2020) - View Source

Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask Her Majesty's Government whether hospitals in England used the triage tool to assess whether to admit elderly patients to intensive care between March and August; if so, whether age was the only criteria used to make such assessments; what assessment they have made of the impact of that system on the provision of care to all those that needed it; and who (1) devised, and (2) authorised, that tool.


Answered by
Lord Bethell Portrait
Lord Bethell
This question was answered on 5th November 2020

Claims that frail and elderly patients were denied care in wave one of the coronavirus pandemic, in part because of a triage tool which was developed for use if the National Health Service was overwhelmed, are categorically untrue. Guidance to help clinicians make rational, evidence-based decisions in the event of intensive care units being overwhelmed was commissioned by the NHS England National Medical Director and the four United Kingdom Chief Medical Officers but work was halted when it became clear the NHS would not be overwhelmed.

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