Idaho hospitals begin rationing health care amid COVID surge

[Omaha Steve]

Source: AP

By REBECCA BOONE

BOISE, Idaho (AP) — Idaho public health leaders announced Tuesday that they activated “crisis standards of care” allowing health care rationing for the state’s northern hospitals because there are more coronavirus patients than the institutions can handle.

The Idaho Department of Health and Welfare quietly enacted the move Monday and publicly announced it in a statement Tuesday morning — warning residents that they may not get the care they would normally expect if they need to be hospitalized.

The move came as the state’s confirmed coronavirus cases skyrocketed in recent weeks. Idaho has one of the lowest vaccination rates in the U.S.

The state health agency cited “a severe shortage of staffing and available beds in the northern area of the state caused by a massive increase in patients with COVID-19 who require hospitalization.”



FILE - In this Aug. 31, 2021, file photo, Jack Kingsley R.N. attends to a COVID-19 patient in the Medical Intensive care unit (MICU) at St. Luke's Boise Medical Center in Boise, Idaho. Idaho public health leaders have activated "crisis standards of care" for the state's northern hospitals because there are more coronavirus patients than the institutions can handle. The Idaho Department of Health and Welfare made the announcement Tuesday, Sept. 7. (AP Photo/Kyle Green, File)


Read more: https://apnews.com/article/business-health-public-health-coronavirus-pandemic-idaho-db21f9a14254996144e78aafb1518259

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Death panels thanks to Republicans?

[Jilly_in_VA]

1. Tents in the parking lot

should be erected for unvaccinated Covid patients. Unvaccinated staff and volunteers/family can care for them out there. If that sounds harsh, that's how I feel. They are the ones driving the pandemic now.

[Rural_Progressive]

4. Doesn't sound harsh to me at all

You're okay with putting up tents, much more generous than how I feel about them.

May have a little to do with the fact you're in VA and I'm in WA.

[SheltieLover]

5. Absolutely!

Pls read this:

https://www.statnews.com/2021/08/13/elective-surgeries-delayed-again-doctors-response/

My friend had heart attack 1 wk ago.

Waited EIGHT HRS for care because magats, willfully unvaxed, have overrun hospitals (TN)!

Dr. Sent her home with rxs to protect her from the cesspool of covid our hospitals have become!

[wnylib]

11. Not tents, but separate facilities.

Communities need to set up separate clinics that specialize in covid cases. In large metropolitan areas, maybe one or two hospitals could be designated for covid so the rest can operate as usual. In areas away from metropolitan centers, states could set up separate clinics. It would be more efficient and would not disrupt hospital functions for everyone else.

[stillcool]

12. they have a "severe shortage of staffing"

I have read the National Guard medical personnel have been sent out to different states in dire straits. Kind of amazing it's becoming normal, along with no consequences.

[wnylib]

29. With incentives for the staff of

a specialized clinic, it might work. I'm not sure what the incentives would be since money is usually a good incentive and covid care is costly, with little money coming in from most patients. Federal funding, maybe. Good PPE, counselng available for the staff, rotating staff to allow time off to recharge their energy. That requires enough staff, I know, but if relief time was an incentive, it might draw enough people to make it possible.

[roamer65]

19. Old vacant stores, like Kmarts.

Pamida, etc, etc.

[wnylib]

31. They would need refurbishing and equipment.

Maybe turn some existing clinics into covid care centers. They would still need additional equipment, but not as much remodeling. Last year at New York's peak, some Catholic hospitals converted to being exclusively covid hospitals.

[roamer65]

33. Those would work 2

[Equomba]

13. Harsh? Hardly.

My niece's husband is a nurse, working in a hospital in Spokane. He said a number of the nurses and staff are quitting. And as Spokane is only 10 miles or so from Idaho, I would take it a step further... if you're unvaccinated and can't show proof of residency in WA then go back home. Otherwise, you get a tent and are treated ONLY AFTER the normal people are taken care of.

I'm completely over these idiots.

[calimary]

20. Welcome to DU. Equomba!

That's almost exactly what I wrote in another thread. Put 'em in tents OUTSIDE the hospital, and reserve the hospital beds and the full-on intensive care units for people needing treatment for other problems and ailments. OR they're suffering from COVID but can provide proof that they DID get vaccinated.

There should be CONSEQUENCES for bad, reckless, selfish, and anti-social behavior! No you DON'T get first-class treatment when you willfully, deliberately, selfishly didn't take the recommended precautions and just went dancing around your merry and fiendishly ignorant way. You deserve to lie in the bed YOU made.

[NotASurfer]

26. That's be just about how an overwhelming outbreak will have to be handled

Hospital breaks out its last resort contingency plans, commandeers a tent or parking garage, and triages the Covid patients. Prioritize life-threatening non-Covid medical treatment, so you still have a functional medical facility, they go directly to the ER.

Before it gets to that, we'll start to see large facilities converted to temporary Covid-only overflow hospitals. We didn't have to use them much the last time. At least this time we have competent adult leadership

[BlueIdaho]

30. The largest Hospital in North Idaho

Has an abandoned Shopco right across the street. Since Gov. do-Little has activated the national guard it would be easy enough to set up a separate facility for unvaccinated infected patients. That way the hospital could get back to treating those non-covid cases (heart conditions, hip replacements, and neurosurgical conditions) that are currently being told to go suck eggs.

We the vaccinated need to stress our rights as a majority.

[iluvtennis]

34. Ditto. n/t

[olddad65]

35. No vaccination, no hospitalization. It is that simple.

[NCjack]

2. Will Sarah Palin be called in to advise them in setting up GOP death panels?

[calimary]

17. Don't need her. The entire republi-CON party IS a death panel.

[The Unmitigated Gall]

36. +100

[mpcamb]

22. Treat the vaccinated first.

[Vinca]

7. So these are GOP death panels . . . right?

[progressoid]

8. That's the first thing that came to my mind as well. n/t

[Jarqui]

24. Same with me: "so the GOP finally got their death panels .." ....nt

[cstanleytech]

9. In my opinion there are a number of Republican governors that should be brought to trial for

crimes against humanity as their deliberate actions are causing thousands of deaths.

[Mz Pip]

10. Some stupid right wing site

posted the vaccine mandates are the problem. The hospitals wouldn’t be short staffed if they didn’t have the mandates. People are quitting rather than get vaccinated.

I can’t wrap my head around so much stupid.

[AllyCat]

14. Why do people who don't believe in the virus or the vaccine

Go to the hospital? Why don’t they just stay home? Do they get scared when it IS real or think it is something else?

[KS Toronado]

21. They should stay home and away from others.....

and drink bleach or ivermectin or hydroxychloroquine for Der orange Fuhrer, and prove to the
world alternate medicine works, and will be the basis for the new repug health care plan.

[Ford_Prefect]

15. We are headed for the same situation here in Montana soon if we haven't hit it already.

ICUs are full or filling up with new COVID cases of which 100% are unvaxed. But no mask or other health actions mandate from Gov. Greg give-em-hell Gianforte.

[LaMouffette]

25. I'm also in Montana and it is driving me crazy that people here are acting as if Covid is over.

I'm still masking up (never stopped, actually, even though fully vaxxed) and avoiding crowds like the plague (literally), but anytime I have to go shopping, I only see maybe 5 percent of the other customers wearing a mask, no matter where I go.

I think the comparatively low rate of Covid in Montana has made anti-maskers and anti-vaxxers even more convinced that the virus is a hoax. They don't seem to realize that our low Covid rate is more likely due to our low population than anything else. But we're catching up to the rest of the states now, courtesy of Covid and Greg I-Like-to-Beat-Up-Reporters Gianforte and the R-controlled Montana legislature.

Unless they get it (the virus), they will never "get it" (understand that we are in an unprecedented public health crisis).

[Ford_Prefect]

28. The local media seem to be 2 faced about it too.

Reporting the exciting gatherings for concerts and county fairs as if it were all over. At the same time we have grim faced TV anchors reporting how fast the spike in new COVID cases has filled the hospitals seemingly without the context that 89% of the newly ill are unvaxed and many are very young. No one seems willing to confront Gianforte or his lackeys in county and town commissions. We have the same numbers of health care workers leaving from burn-out or disgust as Idaho and other places facing overload but that's not reported either or the editors are stifling it.

I've never stopped masking. I do not intend to until we're at least 90% vaxed and I've had the booster. With one virulent variant here and at least 2 more coming soon it simply is NOT safe. You cannot tell who's had the shots and who is just mugging for the cameras.

[LaMouffette]

32. You're right! I think the news stations are terrified of turning off any portion of their viewership

or, more likely, their sponsors, both groups made up largely of Republican Trump humpers. So, not wanting to offend any Republicans in our crimson red state, they refuse to sound the alarm on Covid and continue to cover the "happy news."

But they are doing a terrible disservice to Montanans by reinforcing the idea that everyone can go back to normal now and anyone who is still worried about Covid is just being paranoid.

[KS Toronado]

16. FQX non-news will start calling them death panels and blame Biden for them.

And in their next breath claim masks/vaccines are unhealthy for you.
"Oh what a lovely web you weave"

[riversedge]

18. I think of all the pain and sorrow that these families have and many now without a mom or

dad. So much loss and it did not have to happen.

[Initech]

27. Which is why I blame so much of this on Facebook.

10 years of anti-vaccine propaganda and social media brainwashing is what got us here.

[IronLionZion]

23. Liberal Socialists are rationing healthcare only in red states

coincidentally, it is a vast liberal conspiracy that COVID is mostly causing hospitalizations among unvaccinated conservatives these days.