JAMA : the journal of the American Medical Association
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The demand for medical services such as critical care is likely to often exceed supply. In the setting of these constraining conditions, institutions and individual providers of critical care must use some moral framework for distributing the available resources efficiently and equitably. ⋯ Patients who are not expected to benefit from intensive care, such as those with imminently fatal illnesses or permanent unconsciousness, should not be placed in the intensive care unit. Hospitals should assign individuals the responsibility of intensive care triage, and a committee should oversee the performance of this responsibility to facilitate the most efficient and equitable use of intensive care.
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To analyze whether elderly patients who are black or from poor neighborhoods receive worse hospital care than other patients, taking account of hospital effects and using validated measures of quality of care. ⋯ Quality of hospital care for insured Medicare patients in influenced both by the patient's race and financial characteristics and by the hospital type in which the patient receives care.