A nursing home patient can request a hearing if they are admitted to the hospital from a nursing home but upon returning to the nursing home finds they won’t be readmitted. A favorable ruling doesn’t mean the fight is over.
California resident Bruce Anderson discovered the nursing home where he had been living for four years was not taking him back after he returned from a hospital stay for treatment of pneumonia. Under federal law Anderson was given a state hearing and he won.
An article in Next Avenue “The Agonizing Limbo of Abandoned Nursing Home Residents” detailed Anderson’s problems when he was not readmitted to the nursing home because in California a different agency is supposed to enforce the rules. The enforcement agency sometimes disagrees with the results of the hearing and refuses to enforce the decisions.
Anderson is suing the state.
This is an unfortunate situation and it is not uncommon. Nursing homes are often eager to get rid of residents who require a lot of staff attention. The problem, however, is that these elderly people have nowhere else to go to receive care and must remain in hospitals when it is not medically necessary for them to do so.
In many cases it is actually harmful to stay in the hospital. This also creates financial problems for hospitals, too. It can cost more to provide care for these patients than the government is willing to reimburse.
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