An Idaho program to keep severely mentally ill patients on their meds was out of commission for five months after Idaho’s Health and Welfare Department cut the program in December amid state budget shortages.
Four patients died during that time, and providers warned of risks to public safety if patients went untreated and got violent.
With just days left in the 2026 legislative session, and a mounting sense of the program’s importance with the news of each patient death, lawmakers in April cobbled together the funds to revive it, said Laura Scuri, a behavioral health provider whose private practice contracts with the state to run the program in the Boise area…