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Seema Verma, President Donald Trump's administrator for Medicare and Medicaid Services, followed up during a White House press conference, saying that \"the crisis, as it develops, may require the curtailment of the least-critical or time-sensitive hospital services, but any curtailment must be nuanced to meet the needs of all severely ill patients.\"

Verma’s agency Wednesday night released official recommendations outlining factors that doctors should consider. Those factors include patient risk, availability of beds, staff and equipment and the urgency of the procedure.

\"We urge providers and clinicians and patients to seriously consider these recommendations,\" Verma said. \"They will not only preserve equipment, but it also allows doctors and nurses to help those there on the front and it will protect patients from unnecessary exposure to the virus.\"

Martin, a 48-year-old mother of two, received a \"double whammy diagnosis\" of colon cancer and non-Hodgkin lymphoma a year ago, the final phase of her ordeal was the removal of her catheter port.

\"I found out in mid-February that it was coming out, and I danced a jig,\" Martin said.

\"PHOTO:
Nikki Martin
PHOTO: Nikki Martin finished her last round of chemotherapy in August at Baptist Health hospital in Fort Smith, Arkansas, but a ban on elective surgeries meant she needed to fight to get her catheter port removed.
>

But after confirming Martin’s appointment the day before, the hospital called Monday morning to cancel. Her procedure, they told her, was elective. It needed to wait.

\"It just let all the wind out of my sails,\" Martin said.

On its face, experts said the guidance, which was initiated at the behest of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, makes sense.

Dr. Lewis Kaplan, a trauma surgeon with the Hospital of the University of Pennsylvania, said reducing the steady stream of scheduled patients arriving at hospitals is \"a very wise maneuver.\"

\"It frees up beds and equipment, and also frees up clinicians,\" Kaplan told ABC News. \"If you are not using the anesthesiologist or nurse or the [gastrointestinal] suite, or the [intensive care] suite nurse, they can be recast as you need if you have large scale influxes of patients.\"

But as doctors around the country pore over their patient files, they are confronting the difficulties of determining which cases are essential, and which ones can wait.

\"It's really very challenging,\" Lindenberg said. \"You have to triage, knowing that it is possible somebody puts off a colostomy by three, four or five months or however long this pandemic is going to last. [But then] you might miss something.\"

Nancy Foster, the American Hospital Association’s vice president for quality and patient safety policy, told ABC News the group -- which represents nearly 5,000 hospitals and other health care providers -- remains concerned about the issue of elective surgery postponements.

Foster said the association has been lobbying for a policy that would allow medical staff at hospitals leeway to decide which surgeries should continue occurring in their facilities and which should not. The ultimate decision-making \"has to be done locally,\" she said,

\"PHOTO:
Eve Edelheit/The New York Times via Redux Pictures
PHOTO: A nurse visits an isolated patient at Sarasota Memorial Hospital in Sarasota, Fla., March 10, 2020.
>

When Martin received word her catheter removal had to wait, it was more than just disappointing. She thought postponing the procedure sounded dangerous.

Keeping her port-a-cath would mean returning to the chemo center at least once a month to have it flushed to prevent a complication, and that meant coming into close proximity to cancer patients receiving treatment.

\"I could be asymptomatic [for COVID-19], and I'm walking in with the absolute most vulnerable people in the world who are currently getting chemotherapy,\" Martin said. \"This was absolutely a no-win situation. I was going to wind up being a burden either on the operating room staff and supplies, or on the cancer center and their personnel.\"

Dr. Mark Abdelmalek, a medical contributor for ABC News, said doctors are being forced to find a new way of balancing risk versus benefit. If a cardiologist can see a patient in the office, and make a medication adjustment, that may help keep that patient out of the hospital.

\"These are really tough ethical dilemmas,\" Abdelmalek said. \"In the end, every case is different.\"

And there is no reason patients should not weigh in, he said. Martin did just that. She challenged the decision to delay her procedure, and she convinced her surgeon to go ahead with it. Her port was removed on Monday.

\"If you see a better way forward than what your doctor is recommending, ask,\" she advised. \"Ask questions because you know your body better than anybody.\"

ABC News intern Mel Madarang contributed to this report.

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