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Elder Care News
Hospital Dumping of the Old and Demented Hits Los
Angeles Court
LAPD accuses several
hospitals of
dumping patients on skid row
November 17, 2006 - The hospital staff called a cab and paid the driver
to take older woman with dementia to skid row and drop her off,
according to a Los Angeles Times story reporting on “the first criminal
prosecution of a medical center accused of ‘dumping’ patients on skid
row.” Earlier this year the 63-year-old patient, Carol Ann Reyes, was
videotaped leaving in the taxi from Kaiser Permanente’s Bellflower
hospital in LA. Taken away in her gown and socks, she was found
wandering skid row streets.
“The LAPD has accused several hospitals of dumping
patients on skid row over the last year and a half, including Kaiser's
West Los Angeles hospital, Martin Luther King Jr./Drew Medical Center
and Los Angeles Metropolitan Medical Center. Officials at those
hospitals have denied dumping patients, though some have said they had
taken homeless patients to skid row service providers,” according to the
Times story yesterday by Richard Winton and Cara Mia DiMassa.
"I can't understand how these charges would be
levied based on what I know of the incident," Diana Bonta, vice
president of public affairs for Kaiser Southern California told the
reporters.
She said Kaiser had changed some of its practices
since the March incident to better serve discharged homeless patients.
"As soon as we heard about it, we said this is not
how we do business," she said. "And we apologized. Since then, we have
been talking not only with the city attorney's office, but we've worked
with the agencies that service the homeless."
City prosecutors said they spent months examining
more than 40 allegations that hospitals had dropped patients on skid row
after discharge, often against the patient's wishes. The investigation
yielded 15 potential cases, they told the reporters.
Last November the Times reported, “Three hospitals
acknowledged putting discharged patients with nowhere else to go into
taxicabs heading to the city's downtown skid row, the Los Angeles Times
reported.
“Representatives of Hollywood Presbyterian Medical
Center, Kaiser Permanente West Los Angeles and Martin Luther King
Jr./Drew Medical Center said they were helping patients because skid row
offers their best chance of getting services and shelter. They said
patients are sent to skid row only if they are healthy enough.”
Prosecutors told the LA Times they decided to file
the Kaiser case first in part because they had strong evidence and a
compelling victim. Reyes, who was homeless and lived mostly in a public
park in Gardena, had never lived on skid row and was unfamiliar with the
area, they said.
>>
LA Times, Nov. 16, 2006
>>
USA Today/AP Nov. 16, 2006
>>
AP Nov. 26, 2005
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