BOISE, Idaho — Doctors with some of Idaho’s largest health care organizations held a media roundtable Tuesday about what would happen if or when the hospitals reach maximum capacity.
Just last week, St. Luke’s almost activated the next phase of its in-patient ICU capacity plan, the hospital’s Chief Medical Officer Dr. Jim Souza revealed on Tuesday’s call.
“[That] would mean closing down our cardiac observation unit and turning it into an intensive care unit,” Souza said.
The hospital stopped short of doing that, but Souza says, the hospital did assemble the equipment to make it happen and believes actions like this are just a matter of time.
“We are not in crisis conditions yet, but we are very close,” said Saint Alphonsus Chief Clinical Officer Dr. Steven Nemerson.
Saint Alphonsus is also deploying similar methods.
“We look at our ICU census which is full, we look at our in-patient census which is nearly full and we realize the only way that we're going to be able to accommodate this increase in COVID volume is to make new spaces available in areas of clinical care that we don’t traditionally use and we've started to do that,” Nemerson said.
He adds hospitals are not at the point where they have to divert patients but could be within the next couple of weeks.
“The reality is where are we going to divert to? We at Saint Al's can’t divert to St. Luke’s if they have no capacity and they can’t divert to us,” Nemerson said. “And we can’t divert to out of state, because Utah for instance is experiencing a surge and is no longer accepting patients.”
All physicians on Tuesday’s call say they don't want people to panic but instead, understand the reality.
“What we would do is progressively take on more COVID patients, progressively reduce other care,” Souza said.
If they need to take more drastic measures, Souza adds, the governor's task force developed a crisis standard of care early on in the pandemic, which would then prioritize who gets care.
“Two things need to happen for that to be implemented, first thing is the governor needs to make a declaration and that would be statewide,” Souza said. “The second thing that needs to happen is the health care delivery systems need to stand up and activate the teams that actually do the triaging and would implement the standards.”
It’s something hospitals have been preparing for, but no one wants to see happen.
“We have this closing, small window of opportunity in which we can prevent that from happening,” Souza said.
Nemerson goes on to say, if extreme measures are taken, it’ll reflect the public’s actions.
“If we have to execute crisis standards then it's a demonstration of the failure of the community and our leaders to step in and basically turn this situation around,” Nemerson said.
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