Crisis Standards of Care Guidelines for the COVID-19 Pandemic: Fresno Resource Allocation Guide (FRAG)

The coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic has forced healthcare providers and policymakers to look candidly at the possibility that critical care resources, such as ventilators, medical staff, extracorporeal membrane oxygenation (ECMO), bilevel positive airway pressure (BiPAP) machines, and high-flow oxygen, may become scarce or depleted if the virus continues to move throughout the United States unabated. With hospitalizations and ICU occupancy rates rapidly increasing all over the US, we must face the uncomfortable truth that a triage system, much like on the battlefields of war, will need to be implemented. Ethical concerns abound, but the process for addressing limited resources must continue to be explored. Multiple frameworks have previously been developed to address the use of limited medical resources during catastrophic public health emergencies. Many crisis care guidelines and protocols address the maximizing of surge capabilities and allocation of resource use (specifically, ventilators). While overwhelming scenarios unfolded in Europe and then on the East Coast of the United States in March of 2020, our hospital system in central California was obligated to consider previously unimaginable scenarios. In an effort to pro-actively address these, an expert group, consisting of intensivists (adult and pediatric), trauma surgery, palliative care, and ethicists was organized to develop guidelines for resource allocation to be utilized for our medical system in the event of a public health emergency. As part of this process, existing guidelines and consensus documents were reviewed. A novel system for ventilator allocation was developed, termed the Fresno Resource Allocation Guide (FRAG). As the pandemic continued to surge into 2021, we began to look at other resources, such as oxygen delivery systems other than ventilators, as well as healthcare team members. This resource allocation guide takes into account a depletion in critical care supplies for adults and children. It employs ethical principles and evidence-based tools for critical care.