Officials: Health care rationing could spread across Idaho
BOISE, Idaho (AP) — Idaho's move to “crisis standards of care” is allowing some hospitals to ration health care as they struggle with an onslaught of coronavirus patients, and officials are warning the procedures could spread statewide. But the main hospital affected by the designation was already operating under extreme conditions, officials said.
“Unfortunately we haven’t been really at our normal standards for some time,” said Dr. Robert Scoggins, the chief of staff for Kootenai Health, the largest hospital system in the northern half of the state and located in the city of Coeur d’Alene.
The hospital has had to move patients into a conference center, “doing things that were not normal — way outside of normal — at times,” Scoggins said.
State public health officials warn that the rest of the state is teetering on the edge of health care rationing. Newly confimed coronavirus infection cases are surging and Idaho has one of the lowest vaccination rates in the U.S.
“For the rest of the state, we remain dangerously close to crisis standards of care,” Idaho Department of Health and Welfare Director Dave Jeppesen warned Tuesday.
At Kootenai Health, some patients are being treated in converted lobbies and hallways. Urgent surgeries are on hold and critical care patients must often wait long periods of time for intensive care unit beds, said Scoggins said.
“Almost every day at this point we are having cardiac arrest from patients when their oxygen levels dip too low and we can't supply them with enough oxygen,” Scoggins said.
An entire floor of the hospital has been turned into a COVID-19 ward — meaning medical staffers must put on full protective gear before they enter the floor — and the hospital's conference center has also been converted into a field hospital of...
