The Idaho Department of Health and Welfare has activated Crisis Standards of Care across the entire state of Idaho due to the state’s massive influx of COVID-19 patients being hospitalized. The surge, IDHW says, has exhausted existing resources in all areas of Idaho.
Crisis Standards of Care (CSC) was activated in northern Idaho back on September 6. This activation now expands that declaration to the rest of the state.
What does this mean?
This declaration essentially gives hospitals and other treatment facilities across the state the option of implementing care rationing strategies if or when they become necessary. Hospitals will use Crisis Standards of Care on an as-needed basis, according to their own policies. Hospitals and facilities that are managing under their current circumstances can continue to do so.
Crisis standards of care are guidelines that can help healthcare providers decide how to deliver the best possible care under extraordinary circumstances (like in a natural disaster or public health emergency such as the pandemic). When there aren’t enough resources to go around, these standards will help healthcare workers to determine how to care for as many patients as possible and save as many lives as possible. When crisis standards of care are in effect, people who need medical attention may not get the same level of care they’d come to expect.
“The situation is dire,” said Idaho Department of Health and Welfare director Dave Jeppesen. “We don’t have enough resources to adequately treat the patients in our hospitals, whether you are there for COVID-19 or a heart attack or because of a car accident.”
