Duke University medical officials have come up with guidelines for allocating scarce drugs. Supplies of some cancer medications and other drugs can sometimes run low at hospitals. Doctor Phillip Rosoff is the Director of Clinical Ethics at Duke University Medical Center. He says the protocol focuses on fairness.
Rosoff continues, "We don't take people out of a lineup and say well you don't have insurance so you're not going to get any drug or you're a VIP and you jump to the head of the line. So we've made it very clear that in this type of allocation for scarce resources that everybody who is clinically equivalent, medically equivalent, has an equal shot at getting the drug."
Rosoff says conserving scarce drugs is also a priority. He says that can be done by cutting down on experimental trials and prescriptions that may not be necessary or effective.
