Officials: Health care rationing could spread across Idaho

Idaho’s move to “crisis standards of care” this week allows some hospitals to ration health care amid an onslaught of coronavirus patients and officials are warning the the rationing could spread to hospitals statewide

BOISE, Idaho -- 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.