Hospitals plan for more H1N1 patients

TAMPA - While doctors say most cases of the swine flu have been milder than expected, state health officials are still preparing for the worst case scenario.

"We'd have to make a lot of tough decisions." Hillsborough Health Department spokesman Steve Huard said.

Health officials said they started drafting the guidelines a few years ago, after the avian flu outbreak.  The plan, which is only a draft, suggests how hospitals ration medical care and who they treat.

The recommendations include barring patients with incurable cancer, end stage multiple sclerosis and other conditions, if the state is overwhelmed with flu cases.

Read Florida's pandemic influenza plan

The plan also calls for doctors to reserve ventilators and other life saving equipment for patients who are most likely to survive. That decision would be made by the hospitals.

"It is not an easy decision. It really isn't," Dr. James Orlowski said.

Orlowsk heads the Ethics Committee at University Community Hospital.

"If the situation was as bad as it was in Australia and New Zealand, that we might quickly run out of ventilators or breathing machines for patients," he explained.

Like many hospitals, UCH has developed its own plan— a priority list of who would get first access to beds, intensive care and ventilators in case of a critical shortage.

"It's a reality. And if you can save one person you may have to sacrifice another, as opposed to losing them both," Orlowski said.

But health officials say hospitals have been able to handle the number of H1N1 cases.

"We're not there, and we're nowhere close to that," Huard said. "Were we to come to that, we would come to our decisions based on fact and science."