Posted on 01/17/2008 3:03:27 PM PST by bshomoic
Paraplegic man dumped in LA gutter sues hospital
Thu Jan 17, 2008 4:35pm EST
By Jill Serjeant
LOS ANGELES (Reuters) - A mentally ill paraplegic man filed a lawsuit on Thursday against a hospital that dumped him in a gutter on Los Angeles' "Skid Row" -- a case that highlighted the plight of the city's vast homeless population.
Gabino Olvera, 42, sued the Hollywood Presbyterian Medical Center for negligence and elder abuse after it discharged him in February 2007, took him across town in a van and left him in a soiled hospital gown without a wheelchair in the heart of the city's homeless area.
Witnesses who came to Olvera's aid said they saw him dragging himself on the ground with hospital papers and documents clenched in his teeth while the driver sat in her van and applied makeup before driving off.
The incident was captured by security cameras at a nearby homeless shelter.
Hernan Vera, a lawyer with Public Counsel, which helped bring the lawsuit on behalf on Olvera, called it "the most obscene and callous example of this practice that we have seen."
Hollywood Presbyterian did not return calls for comment on the lawsuit filed in Los Angeles Superior Court that seeks unspecified damages.
The Olvera case was one of about 50 reported incidents in the past 12 months of sick, confused and homeless patients being left by ambulances in the 50-block area of downtown Los Angeles thought to have the highest concentration of homeless people in the United States.
Estimates of the number of homeless in the United States ranges from 500,000 to more than a million.
In Los Angeles, an estimated 12,000 people, many of them mentally ill or addicted to drugs and alcohol, live and sleep on the streets of the area known as Skid Row.
Vera called Los Angeles "ground zero in the fight against unlawful dumping of homeless patients by hospitals."
Lawyers for Olvera said one of the goals of the lawsuit was to force local hospitals to change their practices.
In May, Kaiser Foundation Hospitals, the country's largest nonprofit health-care provider, settled a lawsuit involving the dumping of another patient by agreeing to find shelter places for all patients it discharges in Los Angeles.
Kaiser also agreed to improve discharge procedures and to contribute $500,000 to homeless services on Skid Row.
Hollywood Presbyterian said in a statement in May it would adopt similar protocols, but lawyers for Olvera said the hospital had failed to do so.
The hospital ought to sue the city, county and state.
Here's another reason why a hospital ought to shut down an emergency room--then the crazy, drug-addled can't get into the hospital in the first place.
you’re not a conservative. you’re a moron. you should go find another site to pollute.
There was a case in a N. California Kaiser hospital of a woman who simply refused to leave her hospital bed. She remained in the hospital for (last I heard) a year past her discharge. The hospital repeatedly attempted to find her housing and social services, all of which she refused.
She simply remained, and used the hospital room and ate the hospital food, all free of charge. In a case like that, what’s left to do but to dump her behind on the street?
Working in a hospital, clothes get “lost” and we always find some to send someone home in, usually sweats. And just like rehab patients or post surgical clients who need crutches, canes and yes wheelchairs, they don’t go home without them. And they might to to a rehab facility or skilled nursing facility until we get them shelter.
BTW, this has happened to people of all colors by this hospital.
Was he an illegal immigrant?
I find this disgusting. Hospitals have social workers who are supposed to plan for this kind of thing. I don’t care who it is, an illegal or homeless or whatever — you don’t dump a physically and mentally handicapped human being in the street like a piece of garbage.
You have convinced me, they should have just left him in the gutter like that.
Well, unless he arrived in a hospital gown I doubt it. Article said "left him in a soiled hospital gown"
In all likelihood he was covered by Medicaid as a poor senior. But seriously, all nanny state nonsense aside, how difficult would it have been for the hospital to make a couple of calls to local shelters and find one with a bed for him? That is the humane thing to do. Personally I don’t know how anyone with a conscience could leave a crippled old man on the sidewalk in a dang nightgown, I don’t care what sort of bum he is. There are charities and organizations if every city to help the indigent, the hospital could easily make arrangements with them for these sorts of patients.
I suspect there is a lot more to this story than is being reported. The mentally ill often refuse any assistance, and the hospital has no legal means to force such a person to accept assistance. What then?
I found more info but I am not going to link it because it is from CBS/60 Minutes. If you want to read the piece search for “Dumped On Skid Row Anderson Cooper Reports”.
Maybe we do NEED a lib in the White House again.
We well know that if a “D” inhabits the White House, homelessness disappears.
Also we in the East are getting flooded with Joe Kennedy and his Arco ads, thanking Venezuela for the discounted oil, while bashing the Government and Oil companies for being heartless.
If the Dems get all 3 houses, Teddy boy will tell joey to sit under a tree as there is NO heating oil problem....
It seems to me the hospials could work with social svcs. Or they could just make laws to institutiionalize many of them that are old, sick, mental. Can someone tell me why they have a right to live on the streets?
vaudine
This is just barbaric. There is no excuse for what this hospital did and no excuse for the attitudes on display here.
Oh wait.. “Am I my brother’s keeper?”
I think the hospital should have tried to find a place to bring him, though it’s true we don’t know if they tried and he refused. I don’t like the idea of them being able to leave a quad. in the gutter. Of course, the way this will be handled is they’ll be sued and then next time they won’t do it. Sometimes I wonder if maybe businesses need the trial layers to keep them honest. I’m not sure somedays who is worse.
Some of the posts here were pretty callous. I think some of you are idiots. The hubris that gets passed off as conservatism is breathtaking. I have long thought it will be the thing that secures a dem in the WH. Do us all a favor and shut the hell up.
All we are talking about is where he gets dropped off if they decide they need to drive the discharged patient somewhere. I don’t expect the hospital to do any more than provide whatever medical care they are obligated/agree to. But they took the step to drive the guy somewhere, so they essentially took on a responsibility. In that case you drop him at a shelter or other place designed to deal with the homeless. They could have just discharged him and left him in the lobby on his own recognizance. I have to think he showed up with clothes, so give him his clothes back and discharge him. I think the real issue is they didn’t want him hanging around the lobby or the neighborhood so they decided to dump him across town.
Get back to "us"? What, you gotta mouse in your pocket or something?
There is a lot more than is being reported. The LAPD has been accusing hospitals of doing this for at least a couple of years, but they've always denied it until videotape evidence appears. Then they apologize, blame some error in the system and promise not to do it again. Then it happens again. Here's a story about a similar incident in 2006, with a 63 year old woman dumped off on skid row in a hospital gown. The story also says LAPD is accusing the LA County Sheriff's Dept of the same thing.
And closing State (mental) hospitals is so very liberal.
You people all need to take a field trip to Skid Row!
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