Question

It is a busy night in the emergency room and the ICU is down to two open beds. At two in the morning, the ambulance pulls up to the emergency room door with three patients who had been involved in a shoot-out. Apparently, a sting operation had gone bad during a drug deal, and an undercover policeman and two drug dealers had been wounded. All three men appear to be in critical condition and need the services of the ICU (intensive care unit). How would you decide which of the men should receive the ICU beds? Is this a microallocation or macroallocation decision? Would it be appropriate to consider social utility? Whatever your decision, be sure to support it with an ethical rationale. MUST describes what criteria will be used to make the decision, and an argument for or against using social utility, MUST correctly indicates whether this is a micro or macroallocation decision, and MUST states decision and supports it with reasonable ethical rationale

Answer 1

The allocation of healthcare resources involves distributing health-related materials and services among various uses and people. It often involves "patient selection": determining which patients among those who need a particular scarce resource, such as a heart transplant, should receive treatment.

Microallocation focuses on decisions regarding particular persons. It often involves "patient selection": determining which patients among those who need a particular scarce resource, such as a heart transplant, should receive treatment.

Macroallocation, on the other hand, entails decisions that determine the amount of resources available for particular kinds of healthcare services. Macroallocation decisions include how particular health-related institutions such as hospitals or government agencies such as the U.S. National Institutes of Health budget their spending

This is an absolute case of Microallocation because it involves patient selection and determining which patients among three will need a scarce resource i.e. ICU admission and it totally depends upon the severity of the patients based on the triage analysis done in the emergency room . Ethically we should shift the patient who is sick and has an higher chance of recovery because if we shift the patient who has lesser chance of survival then we will loss both of the patients with lesser survival rate due to his condition and the patient with higher survival rate due to unavailability of medical resources at correct time . It would be appropriate to use social utility in cases where all the patients has a higher of survival otherwise it's a waste of resources in those whose survival rate is less .