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16
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by Mirth • 5:59 pm
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L.A. Investigating Alleged Patient Dumping
Los Angeles
Authorities are examining a surveillance tape that shows an elderly woman wandering Skid Row in a hospital gown and slippers as they investigate the practice of hospitals and police agencies dumping homeless people downtown.
Carol Ann Reyes, 63, of Gardena, was taken from a Kaiser Permanente hospital in Bellflower on Monday to the downtown area known as Skid Row, authorities said.
A surveillance camera outside the Union Rescue Mission showed Reyes walking from the direction of a taxi that had just driven away. She wandered the street for about three minutes before a mission staff member brought her inside.
City officials have been looking into the alleged dumping of homeless people in Skid Row, a ramshackle area downtown.
Several hospitals have acknowledged that they put some discharged indigent patients with nowhere else to go into taxicabs headed to the area because it offers a chance for getting services and shelter. Los Angeles police also are investigating whether other law enforcement agencies dump people without anywhere else to go downtown.
“We have been looking into homeless dumping for some time, and this (tape) gives us another example of what has been going on,” said Frank Mateljan, a spokesman for the city attorney’s office.continue reading
Hospital Faces Skid Row Dumping Charges
Los Angeles
In an unprecedented crackdown on a practice experts say is shamefully common around the country, a major hospital chain was accused by prosecutors Thursday of ridding itself of a homeless patient by dumping her on crime-plagued Skid Row.
A surveillance camera at a rescue mission recorded the demented 63- year-old woman wandering around the streets in a hospital gown and slippers last March.
In announcing the criminal and civil charges, City Attorney Rocky Delgadillo said a Kaiser Permanente hospital put the woman in a taxi and sent her to the neighborhood even though she had serious, untreated health problems.
“Kaiser Foundation Hospitals, part of Kaiser Permanente, the largest HMO in the nation, will be held accountable for violating state law, its commitment to its patients, its obligations under the Hippocratic oath, and perhaps most importantly, principles of common decency,” Delgadillo said.
No U.S. hospital has ever been prosecuted on criminal charges of patient-dumping, said President Bush’s homelessness czar, Philip F. Mangano.
Mangano, executive director of the U.S. Interagency Council on Homelessness, said patient dumping is a widespread practice. “We need to hold hospitals accountable, but also work with them to resolve these issues,” he said.
Kaiser’s Bellflower hospital, which discharged the woman, is among 10 Los Angeles-area hospitals under investigation on suspicion of discharging homeless patients onto the streets instead of into the custody of a relative or shelter.
The legal actions filed against Kaiser late Wednesday included criminal charges of false imprisonment and dependent adult endangerment, and civil claims involving the treatment of patients and laws on discharging them.
Filed: Corruption, Health Care
