Appropriate strategies for maximising aggregate benefit of a limited resource differ by the type of resource scarcity
| Type of resource limitation | Strategy for optimising aggregate population benefit | Mitigation or contingency capacity strategy | Crisis capacity strategy |
| Life-supportive intensive care intervention | Prioritise those patients most likely to survive. | Limit non-emergent surgical procedures that may require postoperative intensive care unit stay. Expand use of non-invasive ventilation (eg, Bi-level Positive Airway Pressure [BiPAP] and high flow nasal canula). | Enact an explicit, standardised, and transparent triage protocol to prioritise patients most likely to survive to receive scarce life-supportive treatments (eg, mechanical ventilation) and withhold these treatments from patients who are least likely to survive even were they to recieve this care. |
| Staff time and energy | Prioritise the worst-off. | Expedite hospital discharge for patients who are no longer in need of acute care. | Restrict access to acute care services and hospital admission for defined cohorts of patients at relatively low risk of poor outcomes if this care were to be withheld. |
| Prioritise high-value treatments and staff interventions. | Restrict clinical tasks that require intensive staff efforts, but for which the near-term patient benefit is negligible (eg, components of medical record documentation intended only for medical billing). | Universally restrict selected treatments and staff interventions that require substantial staff time and energy, but for which near-term patient benefit is low (eg, extracorporeal life support and cardiopulmonary resuscitation for certain groups of seriously ill patients). |