Frail coronavirus patients may be denied critical care under an NHS scale system designed to free up ICU beds.
The controversial ‘Clinical Frailty Scale’ (CFS) ranks patients’ vulnerability from one to nine in order to prioritise those most likely to recover from the killer virus.
Those with a combined score of more than five are said to have uncertainty around the benefits of critical care, according to the system, which has been implemented while NHS hospitals desperately scramble to free up beds and ventilators.
It comes after NHS sources denied that elderly patients would be rejected from critical care using a scoring system – where over-65s with the deadly virus were to be ranked out of 10 based on their age, frailty and underlying conditions.
More than 5,000 coronavirus patients are being diagnosed at hospitals every day and some intensive care units are already approaching capacity.
NHS doctors and other health professionals were said to have been issued with the scoring system to identify ‘who may not benefit from critical care interventions’, the Financial Times reported.
Patients aged 71 to 75 were said to automatically score four points for their age and an extra three for their frailty.
Source: Daily Mail
