With regard to the current surge of COVID-19 patients, the situations when the intensive care units will not be able to provide care to all patients who need it are increasingly likely. This interdisciplinary document: a) formulates the basic framework and principles for the provision of health care in a situation of lack of scarce resources, b) represents a basis for clinical decision making in such situations, c) can be used for the creation of relevant internal documents issued by individual providers of health care.
The document is created in the context of the COVID-19 pandemic, but its principles apply to any mass casualty situation where there is a lack of scarce resources.