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Sounds like the source of the problem is referenced here:
The patient can be discharged when the clinicians have determined that any further care can be provided as an outpatient, “provided the individual is given a plan for appropriate follow-up care as part of the discharge instructions,” the federal agency said in an operations manual.
If she’s in a state where she might at any point fatally worsen and she has no chance of non-emergency care, this sounds a lot more reasonable.
Though the headline states the patient was discharged. So its something else, but if the article has no further substance theres nothing to go on. Anyone want to go visit room 373?
They can be discharged as soon as they’re no longer on the brink of death, but that’s not as thorough as most people would want for themselves.
Something like repeated strokes or blood clots can be treated with outpatient care, but will also probably lead to grievous disability or death if you don’t have any way to pay for outpatient care. Medical facilities are not required to provide non urgent care to patients who cannot pay for it, so poor, uninsured, or underinsured people with chronic illnesses can find themselves in a kind of limbo where they have to get very sick before they can be treated.
It is total speculation, but if she had a condition which could suddenly and fatally worsen and the hospital only temporarily stabilized her, she might have wanted to stay in a medical facility, so she at least had a chance to get emergency treatment in time.
If only we had a sane healthcare system that didn't waste resources just for the sake of excluding the poor
It's not a hotel or an apartment, it's hospital property. They can't just drag them out?
Yeah I don’t get it. At my hospital, if you’re discharged and refuse to leave, you’re getting security escort. Either walk out like an adult or get dragged out.
Since the hospital can't share information on a legal matter, the commenters on the article are fascinating. People's baseline guesses from limited information are all over the map. What is the woman in their imagination like? Why is she doing this? What does this woman they're imagining deserve?
The comments from people who work in healthcare (and therefore have more information to work off of) are more interesting in a useful way, of course.
The hospital has repeatedly made efforts to coordinate her departure with family members and offered transportation to obtain necessary identification, the lawsuit said.
That part says plenty to me. They haven't actually established that she has anywhere to go. One thing I don't miss about Taxi and Rideshare driving: transporting people directly from ERs to homeless shelters. I've had hospitals try to get me to pickup people wearing nothing but hospital gowns, no possessions, rolled out in a wheel-chair the hospital was keeping and requiring someone to physically load them into the vehicle.
Saving the sly retrieval of the hospital's bedpan for last was a nice touch on their part - no healthcare "professional" should be so smooth at all this, and comfortable with it, as these people are.
Mind you, in my state, any form of physical contact between hired driver and passenger is illegal outside of dedicated medical transportation services - I COULD NOT LEGALLY help them leave the vehicle. I thank God I drove Taxi for the year before Uber and Lyft came to my town so that I had the time to learn this stuff, and I was stupid-sad the day it became clear that Ride-share was going to be no better about it than the Taxi service.
Actually, greedy-ass Uber and Lyft are worse for doing fuck-all to be sure that drivers know the laws on it in advance. I am amazed I've never heard of them and the health-insurance companies being sued into oblivion over the lack of due-diligence alone. I used to literally dream of being put on the stand to testify against them -not nightmares, dreams.
Shudder to think of the situations I and these patients could have been stuck in if I didn't call-ahead to the destinations to make sure there was someone there to help un-load, nevermind the times I either refused the ride on patient-safety grounds or drove them to another ER by (obviously valid)request. A few times I was able to convince a nicer shelter to take certain individuals in, but mostly I just felt powerless along with these victims.
Are they still bringing her food? She's officially discharged, they should stop doing that.