http://www.kcra.com/mostpopular/21468705/detail.html

Hospitals Accused Of 'Dumping' Patients

Sacramento Councilman Wants Hand-To-Hand Transfers Of Mental Patients

POSTED: 2:42 pm PDT October 29, 2009
UPDATED: 4:02 pm PDT October 29, 2009

SACRAMENTO, Calif. -- When workers arrived at Sacramento's Loaves and Fishes shelter one morning in late September, they found Jean Miller on the doorstep. She was cold, confused and abandoned.

Miller has multiple medical issues and the mental capacity of a 3-year-old. She remembered a taxi driver brought her to the shelter from Woodland Memorial Hospital -- more than 20 miles away and in a different county -- after she was treated there for pneumonia.

"She is frightened. She has been crying for hours knowing that she has no where to go but on the streets here," said Libby Fernandez, a nun who runs the daytime shelter.

Loaves and Fishes has no overnight facilities. But the shelter said that doesn't stop hospitals and social services from "patient dumping," or giving patients bus tickets and taxi rides to homeless shelters.Miller said she was dropped off in the middle of the night.

"This woman has no place to go, yet what we understand is that the hospital paid for a taxi to bring her to Loaves and Fishes," Fernandez said. "This is a serious issue. She is not allowed to be anywhere. Nobody wants her.

"Woodland Memorial told KCRA 3 that Jean Miller was a patient, and that the hospital offered a taxi voucher to an overnight shelter in Yolo County.But, the Woodland Memorial said, Miller refused to go, and the hospital didn't know how she ended up in Sacramento.

"We do not turn people out to the street. If people leave to the emergency department, we can't physically restrain them. If they don't have a place to go, we make every effort to find a place for them to go," said Elli Olson, Woodland's vice president of nursing.

Olson was "disturbed" by allegations of patient dumping, she said, "because that is not the process that we use here."

Fernandez contends patient dumping isn't uncommon: At least one patient a month shows up at Loaves and Fishes. Often, she said, hospitals don't bother to call ahead of time.

A state investigation found Kaiser South Sacramento Medical Center failed to follow California law when it discharged Jason Adams. The hospital called a taxi to pick up Adams, a brain-injured patient who was taken to Loaves and Fishes after it had closed for the weekend.

"We did not fully follow our discharge policy, and we apologized to our patient and his family for this error," a statement from Kaiser to KCRA 3 said.For taxi drivers such as Nirup Dave, transporting patients means being caught in the middle of a situation they might not be trained to handle."It is tricky, because you don't know the patient your are picking up. Are they in the right state of mind or are they in pain?" Dave said. "What about if they start freaking out -- what are we supposed to do? We are not medically trained staff. We don't know."

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