Nonessential Procedures in MA Hospitals Must Be Postponed Sat

This is beginning to look a lot like May, 2020. According to a report from WCVB, all hospitals in Massachusetts must postpone and/or cancel all non-essential in-patient elective surgery. There is an exception and that is unless it would lead to the decline of health.

The Department of Public Health in Massachusetts said,

To preserve health care personnel resources, effective 12:01 a.m. on Dec. 26, all hospitals are directed to postpone or cancel all nonessential inpatient elective invasive procedures in order to maintain and increase inpatient capacity. Hospitals shall make every effort to preserve their inpatient capacity by cancelling nonessential electives and redeploying staff.

Bad news for someone who might be looking to have a joint replaced. What if a patient is scheduled to have hip replacement surgery, however, it is not bad enough to be considered life-threatening and the procedure has to be postponed. The patient would have to remain in discomfort until the procedure could be rescheduled. That's just one example that I can think of.

I would imagine that doctors have a huge say whether or not their patient can get surgery or not, right? Or, because this is coming from the Department of Public Health, they can't do anything about it?

These are still strange days that we live in.