BREAKING: Idaho's ICU usage at the brink

Catie Clark//August 24, 2021//

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Idaho Department of Health and Welfare director Dave Jeppesen and the weekly IDHW media briefing. Screen shot by Catie Clark.

The State of Idaho hasn’t put its health care Crisis Standards of Care into place, but according to the director of the Idaho Department of Health and Welfare (IDWH), the state is ready and prepared to do so immediately if the State of Idaho Medical Advisory Committee deems it necessary.

Idaho’s hospitals are full of delta variant COVID-19 patients and as of this morning, one rural hospital was unable to find an ICU bed for a patient. During the IDHW weekly media briefing on Aug. 24, Director Dave Jeppesen remarked that: “Our ICU usage is the highest it’s ever been,” and he qualified that statement by saying that Idaho was past the peak usage of ICU beds from the previous COVID-19 surge.

To one journalist’s question about how close the state was to running out of hospital capacity, he replied: “If the question is how close are we to (running out of) hospital capacity, I would say we are over hospital capacity right now…We’ve had one today — we had a patient (who) needed to come out of a rural setting and we were unable to find an ICU bed this morning. We’re hoping one opens up this afternoon. But that’s kind of where we are (at) the state level.”