Idaho cut this service for patients with psychosis. Already, three have died

A former patient of an Idaho program that sought to keep people with severe psychosis on their medication has died, providers said. It was the third death since the Idaho Health and Welfare Department cut the program, called Assertive Community Treatment, in December amid statewide budget shortages.

The man who died was living in the Treasure Valley, said Laura Scuri, who had contracted with the state to run the Boise chapter of the program, in an email to the Idaho Statesman. Providers have declined to name the former patients who died, citing legal requirements around patient confidentiality.

“Destabilization is already occurring,” Scuri and Ric Boyce, another former leader of the program, wrote in a news release announcing the death. “The increase in deaths makes that undeniable.”

The release did not specify a date or cause of death.

In the 18 months before the program’s cancellation, there had been one reported death among its approximately 200 patients statewide, according to the release.

When providers across Idaho learned that the state planned to cut their program, they rushed to warn lawmakers and state officials that the results could be dire.

“We told the state. We said, ‘Look, if you do this, it’ll take five weeks for people to start dying’” once people’s medications wear off, Scuri previously told the Statesman. The patients involved in the program, she said, tended to have such severe conditions that they were unlikely to come in for care on their own. They relied on providers to check in on them.

The Assertive Community Treatment program sought to find and help treat people suffering from severe mental illness, including schizophrenia and bipolar disorder. The program model gave priority to keeping people on their medications, many of which are monthly shots to guard against psychosis.

Amid state budget shortages, and a resulting call from Gov. Brad Little in August to reduce the department’s budget by 3%, Health and Welfare canceled the program anyway. It was one of few cuts the department could make without violating federal and state Medicaid requirements, said AJ McWhorter, a spokesperson for Health and Welfare.

Without “intensive oversight,” patients served by the Assertive Community Treatment program frequently “lose insight into their illness, stop medication, and become disconnected from reality while experiencing hallucinations and delusions,” according to Thursday’s release.

“When that happens,” Scuri and Boyce wrote, “crises escalate quickly.”