(This article hits home. Five years before she went into the geriatrics
ward in the Catskill Regional Hospital, my mother sold me her house for
$5. This meant when she was on Medicaid when hospitalized rather than
Medicare. With Medicare, the house would have been sold with the
proceeds going to pay for her care. Fortunately, she was in full
possession of her senses until her death so the hospital didn't have any
excuses to discharge her. In fact, the place was pretty damned good to
the patients unlike these fucked up nursing homes that are mostly
warehouses for old people in the way that mental hospitals were for the
mentally ill. I generally have little use for WSWS.org but they covered
these matters quite well:
https://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2020/04/25/nurs-a25.html)
NY Times, Sept. 20, 2020
Nursing Homes Oust Unwanted Patients With Claims of Psychosis
By Jessica Silver-Greenberg and Rachel Abrams
In a New York nursing home, a resident hurled a bingo chip. At a home in
Georgia, a 46-year-old woman, paralyzed from the waist down, repeatedly
complained that no one had changed her diaper. In a California facility,
a patient threw tableware.
In all three cases, the nursing homes cited the incidents as a reason to
send the residents to hospitals for psychiatric evaluations — and then
to bar them from returning.
Across the United States, nursing homes are looking to get rid of
unprofitable patients — primarily those who are poor and require extra
care — and pouncing on minor outbursts to justify evicting them to
emergency rooms or psychiatric hospitals. After the hospitals discharge
the patients, often in a matter of hours, the nursing homes refuse them
re-entry, according to court filings, government-funded watchdogs in 16
states, and more than 60 lawyers, nursing home employees and doctors.
The practice at times violates federal laws that restrict nursing homes
from abruptly evicting patients.
“Even before the pandemic, there was tremendous pressure to get rid of
Medicaid patients, especially those that need high levels of staffing,”
said Mike Wasserman, a former chief executive of Rockport Healthcare
Services, which manages California’s largest chain of for-profit nursing
homes. “The pandemic has basically supercharged that.” He said homes
often take advantage of fits of anger to oust patients, claiming they
need psychiatric care.
About 70 percent of American nursing homes are for profit. The most
lucrative patients are those on short-term rehabilitation stints paid
for by private insurers or Medicare, the federal program that insures
seniors and people with disabilities. Poor people on longer-term stays
are covered by Medicaid, which reimburses nursing homes at a much lower
rate than Medicare.
The financial incentive to have more Medicare or privately insured
patients, and fewer on Medicaid, becomes more pronounced when the
Medicaid patients have illnesses, like dementia, that require extra care
from staff.
Nursing homes have faced acute staff shortages as the coronavirus has
left employees sick or afraid to go in to work. Workers said they faced
increased pressure from their employers during the pandemic to get rid
of the most expensive, least lucrative patients.
Invoking psychiatric problems is a popular tool. Nursing homes routinely
admit patients with dementia, Alzheimer’s or similar illnesses, and
angry outbursts are common.
In March, the Rehabilitation Center of Santa Monica, Calif., sent Joan
Rivers, who suffered from dementia and was on Medicaid, to the emergency
room at USC Verdugo Hills Hospital. The nursing home’s staff said Ms.
Rivers, 87, had tossed aside her chair, scaring other residents,
according to her daughter, Evon Smith, and a government-funded watchdog.
Ms. Smith said that she had repeatedly asked the Rehabilitation Center
to take her mother back, but that it had refused. A social worker at
Verdugo Hills said she, too, had tried unsuccessfully to get the nursing
home to readmit Ms. Rivers.
Linda Taetz, the chief compliance officer at Mariner Health Care, which
operates the Rehabilitation Center and 19 other nursing homes in
California, said the center hadn’t known that Ms. Rivers wanted to return.
Ms. Rivers eventually was admitted to the Colonial Care Center nursing
home in Long Beach, Calif. There, she contracted Covid-19. She died on
July 20.
Federal law requires nursing homes to follow strict guidelines when they
intend to evict someone: They must give 30 days’ notice and come up with
a plan to transfer the resident to a facility that can meet his or her
needs. If a resident goes to a hospital, the facility must hold the bed
for a week.
But nursing homes frequently flout these rules, according to employees
and state-funded ombudsmen who help oversee the industry. The New York
Times reported in July that nursing homes were evicting an increasing
number of low-income — and therefore low-profitability — residents into
homeless shelters and run-down motels, apparently in violation of
federal law.
There is no national data on nursing home evictions. The Times contacted
ombudsmen in all 50 states. Some said they had not seen nursing homes
dumping patients in hospitals during the pandemic. But in 16 states,
including California, Texas and New York, ombudsmen said the problem was
continuing. Some said they believed it was getting worse.
“We have been seeing these kinds of illegal discharges all the time,
because nursing homes seem to have figured out that they will rarely, if
ever, be penalized,” said Alison Hirschel, senior legal counsel to the
Michigan ombudsman program. “It’s devastating for residents and their
families all the time, but especially horrible and dangerous during a
pandemic.”
Medicaid patients who require lots of staff attention “have a target on
their back,” she said.
The problem predates the pandemic.
Gloria Single was a resident of the Pioneer House nursing home in
Sacramento. She had dementia and pulmonary disease and was on
California’s version of Medicaid. Pioneer House was receiving about $400
a day for her care.
In 2017, Ms. Single got upset and threw utensils, according to a lawsuit
against Pioneer House filed in state court by Ms. Single’s lawyer. The
nursing home called 911, and Ms. Single was taken to a hospital for an
involuntary psychiatric hold, in which patients are held until they are
determined not to be a danger to themselves or others. The hospital
determined later that day that there was nothing wrong with Ms. Single
aside from her pre-existing dementia.
But Pioneer House would not let her return. The California Department of
Health Care Services concluded that Pioneer House had violated the law
and ordered it to let her go back. The home still refused. After about
five months at the hospital, Ms. Single was moved to another nursing
home. She died last year.
“You can get $1,000 extra a day by getting rid of the Gloria Singles of
the world and replacing them with someone on Medicare,” said Matthew
Borden, Ms. Single’s lawyer.
John Supple, a lawyer for the Retirement Housing Foundation, which
operates Pioneer House, said that its medical director had deemed the
home unsuitable for Ms. Single’s medical needs and that Pioneer House
had never received the medical records it needed to readmit her. (Ms.
Single’s lawyer disputes that. The lawsuit is ongoing.) Mr. Supple said
Pioneer House had held Ms. Single’s bed for months and had not replaced
her with a Medicare patient.
During the pandemic, nursing homes in Illinois and Michigan have
repeatedly sent elderly and disabled Medicaid patients to
NeuroBehavioral Hospital in Crown Point, Ind., said Kimberly Jackson, a
discharge planner at the psychiatric hospital. In one case, a resident
who yelled at a staff member was branded as being violent and having a
psychotic break.
“The homes seem to be purposely taking symptoms of dementia as evidence
of psychosis,” Ms. Jackson said. (Christy Gilbert, the chief operating
officer of the hospital’s parent company, said instances when nursing
homes dumped patients in her company’s hospitals were “very few and far
between.”)
In June, Life Care Center of Plainwell, Mich., sent Nicki Safapour, a
Medicaid patient who needs a wheelchair, to NeuroBehavioral Hospital.
Because of a developmental disability, Mr. Safapour, 55, has the mental
capacity of a 5-year-old, according to his brother John, who is his
legal guardian. He said Life Care had told him that Mr. Safapour
assaulted an employee and another resident.
A state health inspector later determined that the discharge was
illegal, according to a copy of the inspector’s report reviewed by The
Times.
“It seemed like they were just trying to get rid of Nicki,” John
Safapour said. “He took up a lot of staff time.”
A spokesman for Life Care, Davis Lundy, said that privacy rules
prohibited him from discussing Mr. Safapour’s case, but that Life Care
had a significant number of residents on Medicaid and that “we never
discharge patients based on their payer source.”
The families of some evicted patients have had to take them into their
homes, although they lack the training or equipment to care for them.
In June, Connie Rodina got a phone call from the Richmond Healthcare and
Rehabilitation Center in Richmond, Kan. Her 63-year-old brother, Jon
Fowler, who suffers from mental illness and dementia, had hit another
resident. Ms. Rodina, her brother’s guardian, was told that she needed
to pick him up immediately.
By the time Ms. Rodina arrived, Mr. Fowler was already being transported
to an emergency room. The hospital was ready to discharge him a couple
of days later, after treating him for a urinary tract infection. Ms.
Rodina said Richmond Healthcare wouldn’t take him back.
“You can’t just put somebody out like that,” said Camille Russell, a
regional ombudsman who filed a complaint against the facility with the
Kansas Department for Aging and Disability Services. The complaint is
pending, she said.
Ms. Rodina couldn’t find another nursing home that would admit Mr.
Fowler, who needs near-constant care. After her brother had been in the
hospital for weeks, she reluctantly moved him into her home.
“It’s basically taken my life away from me,” Ms. Rodina said. “It’s
impossible for me to care for him.”
Representatives of Richmond Healthcare didn’t respond to requests for
comment.
In some cases, nursing homes have ignored orders from regulators to take
back patients they sent to emergency rooms or psychiatric hospitals.
Charles Borden, a stroke victim with dementia, had been staying at the
skilled nursing facility at Tahoe Forest Hospital in Truckee, Calif.
Medicaid was covering his long-term stay. But in April, after Mr. Borden
elbowed a nursing assistant and cursed at her, the nursing home sent him
to the hospital’s emergency room for a psychiatric evaluation.
Within hours, the emergency room cleared Mr. Borden to return to the
nursing home. But it wouldn’t take him back, according to court records.
(While the nursing home and the main Tahoe Forest hospital share a
campus and are owned by the same organization, the nursing home is
financially independent from the hospital.)
Later that day, the nursing home dropped off all of Mr. Borden’s
possessions at the E.R. and moved another resident into the room that
Mr. Borden had shared with his wife, Beverly.
Two days later, on April 22, Mr. Borden’s son appealed the decision to
California’s health care agency. It determined that the nursing home was
legally required to take Mr. Borden back. The nursing home refused.
The state agency said it had no authority to force the nursing home to
let Mr. Borden return, aside from fining it $50 for every day it refused.
Matt Mushet, a lawyer for the nursing home, said it “is committed to the
optimal safety of all patients and team members.” He said that he
couldn’t comment on Mr. Borden’s case but that “it’s important for the
public to understand there is more than one side to this story.”
Mr. Borden has spent the past five months marooned in the hospital. His
dementia makes it hard for him to understand what is going on, his son
said, but Mr. Borden asks every day to see his wife.
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