Protocol to assess performance of crisis standards of care guidelines for clinical triage

Louis T Merriam; Maheetha Bharadwaj; Julia L Jezmir; David E Leaf; Edy Y Kim

doi:10.1016/j.xpro.2021.100943

Protocol to assess performance of crisis standards of care guidelines for clinical triage

STAR Protoc. 2021 Dec 17;2(4):100943. doi: 10.1016/j.xpro.2021.100943. Epub 2021 Nov 10.

Authors

Louis T Merriam¹, Maheetha Bharadwaj², Julia L Jezmir³, David E Leaf^{2

4}, Edy Y Kim^{1

2}

Affiliations

¹ Division of Pulmonary and Critical Care Medicine, Department of Medicine, Brigham and Women's Hospital, Boston, MA 02115, USA.
² Harvard Medical School, Boston, MA 02115, USA.
³ Department of Medicine, Brigham and Women's Hospital, Boston, MA 02115, USA.
⁴ Division of Renal Medicine, Department of Medicine, Brigham and Women's Hospital, Boston, MA 02115, USA.

Abstract

During the COVID-19 pandemic, US states developed Crisis Standards of Care (CSC) algorithms to triage allocation of scarce resources to maximize population-wide benefit. While CSC algorithms were developed by ethical debate, this protocol guides their quantitative assessment. For CSC algorithms, this protocol addresses (1) adapting algorithms for empirical study, (2) quantifying predictive accuracy, and (3) simulating clinical decision-making. This protocol provides a framework for healthcare systems and governments to test the performance of CSC algorithms to ensure they meet their stated ethical goals. For complete details on the use and execution of this protocol, please refer to Jezmir et al. (2021).

Keywords: Bioinformatics; Clinical Protocol; Computer sciences; Health Sciences; Systems biology.

MeSH terms

COVID-19 / therapy*
COVID-19 / virology
Critical Care / ethics
Critical Care / standards*
Health Care Rationing / ethics
Health Care Rationing / standards*
Humans
Practice Guidelines as Topic / standards*
SARS-CoV-2 / isolation & purification
Standard of Care / ethics*
Triage / ethics
Triage / methods
Triage / standards*