Priority Healing
Physicians are often faced with conflicting responsibilities to various patients. These conflicts can arise in time, staffing, or simply a shortage of the necessary supplies and equipment. In his sefer, Minchas Asher on Corona (7), R' Asher Weiss outlines the priorities one should assign to treat patients when such conflicts arise.
R’ Asher explains two factors in deciding who to treat first: the severity of the patient’s condition and the probability of successfully treating the patient. Patients with a higher combined score of these two factors take precedence over patients with a lower score. However, this is only before administering any treatment. Once a physician is working with a patient, if a second patient arrives with a higher “score” than the first patient, the physician may not switch to treat the new arrival. The reason for this is that the first patient has been treated by the physician, to stop treatment at a time that further risks the patient’s life would be hastening his death.
He further rules that in his opinion, during the pandemic, when there was a legitimate concern that connecting a patient who was very ill and not likely curable to a ventilator would prevent a second patient who was curable from accessing a ventilator (due to lack of resources) that it was ok to withhold the ventilator from the first patient even if the second patient had not yet arrived in the hospital. Because it could be reasonably assumed that such a patient would present to the hospital shortly, R’ Asher ruled that it’s as if you have two patients to treat when one must follow the rules of priority as explained.
However, whether one can remove a terminally ill patient from a ventilator to treat someone who has a higher chance of survival is a machlokes between R’ Asher Weiss and R’ Zalman Nechemia Goldberg. According to Rabbi Weiss, doing so will hasten the patient’s death, which is forbidden to do. However, Rabbi Goldberg ruled (Asia 1 pg 64) that doing so would be allowed.
Based on the text of Minchas Asher on Corona-19 Siman 7