In such cases, nursing homes may choose to refuse admission to maintain a harmonious environment. Finally, financial considerations are another crucial aspect. Behavioral problems also play an important role in the admissions process. Aggressive or disruptive behavior by potential residents can be difficult for nursing home staff to handle and can endanger the safety and well-being of current residents and staff.
Nursing homes often evaluate a patient's ability to pay for their services. If a prospective resident lacks sufficient financial resources or adequate insurance coverage, this financial barrier can lead to being denied admission, as nursing homes must ensure their financial stability to continue providing care for their current residents. Elderly citizens do not lose their constitutionally guaranteed rights when they enter a nursing home, including the right to refuse medical treatment. A nursing home cannot evict a resident who refuses to receive medical care, even if the refusal makes it difficult to care for them; however, nursing home administrators can legally evict a resident if their refusal to accept medical treatment causes a medical condition that exceeds the facility's capacity to attention.
For example, most nursing homes are unable to provide ventilated care, bariatric care, or acute psychiatric care to their residents. The 1999 Amendments to the Protection of Nursing Home Residents (NHRPA) prohibit the involuntary transfer or discharge of a patient when a nursing home stops accepting residents funded by Medicaid. While they no longer have to accept new Medicaid-funded residents, they can't expel current residents. Margie is an 86-year-old nursing home resident who has developed a bladder infection.
As is the case with many older women, she is also confused. As she walks out the door of a hospital, she struggles and shouts: “They'd better not tell anyone else why they're going to the hospital.” When their elderly family members who live out of state call to see how Margie is doing, they are told that the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA) prevents staff from saying anything. Unfortunately, some nursing homes they regularly evict residents illegally. No method of illegal eviction is more frustrating than the hospital dump.
In such a scenario, a nursing home has a resident transferred to a hospital for some need for intensive care. Then, when it's time to discharge the resident, the nursing home refuses to re-admit him, often on the grounds that “the bed is already full.” When a hospital discharges a patient and the nursing home does not accept him again, it is called “hospital abandonment””. The abandonment of mostly low-income nursing home patients (or those who have been left with low incomes because the nursing home has already taken all the money they have) is a growing problem, involving a complicated interaction between nursing homes complaining about low Medicaid payments, hospitals struggling to find another center to take the person and frail elderly and their families. I have worked in a nursing home for the past five years.
Everyone likes to talk about how horrible nursing homes are and how they feel like they've been treated terribly. But if you worked in a nursing home and saw things from a different perspective, you might understand why nursing homes don't accept certain patients. We have to deal with crazy, rude patients and even crazier families; many of whom are just looking for a reason to file a lawsuit and make a profit with their family member. Many of the patients are “abandoned” by a family member because they say they cannot or do not want to take care of them, so the center cannot force the family to take them elsewhere, even if long-term care was not the reason the patient went there.
Then the family doesn't even visit them, except when their 92-year-old grandmother gets sick and has to go to the hospital. But then the family screams on the phone or causes a scene in the center, as if a 92-year-old lady was never going to get sick and, somehow, it was our fault. Some of the demands and expectations of families are ridiculous. Most of these patients have chronic illnesses caused by their poor decisions for life and are not going to get better; however, somehow, when they predictably decrease, it's our fault.
Hospitals also leave patients in nursing homes. Hospital staff lie to our staff about the patient's behavior to get him placed, and later discover that the patient tries to hit the staff, spit on the staff, bite the staff or is very confused and constantly tries to leave the center. The nursing home is also their landfill for homeless people, drug addicts, drunkards and those who can't afford our services, so we have to maintain them without being compensated. It is also very difficult to give 30 days notice to evict patients, since patients have more rights than nursing homes. I could go on and on.
The more medically complicated a patient is, the more attention they receive from government surveyors. Surveyors love to find any reason to issue citations to nursing facilities to get them out money. Patients who complain about everything are the worst patients you can have. They complain and complain about everything and everyone, but even so, they refuse to leave and go to another nursing facility.
If the center doesn't want to take the patient back, there's probably a good reason for that. Last night, a religious care center in western Canada tried to do this. The hospital's emergency room was full of older women on stretchers, two days before the 15th of the month of the billing cycle. The care center did not want to explain the circumstances to the family, but they had already called the government official to organize the reassignment of their room before the ambulance left the building.
The emergency room doctor noticed this tactic and returned her to the hospital without being admitted. I heard the nurse at the care center arguing on the phone, but it was a lost argument. A person simply isn't having a “heart attack” when their blood oxygen level is 98 percent and their skin has a healthy glow. What kind of nurse doesn't know this? Emergency room doctors can stop this nonsense, and in fact they do, thank God.
This is also horrible for the hospital. Especially if it's a patient who has no legitimate need for intensive care (that is, the grandmother was being combative today), so we call 911 and say that she “has fallen” or that she has a “generalized weakness” and we leave her in the hospital. I hope I can punch before I come back.) It just happened to us in a “faith-based nursing home”. The eviction of a resident for refusing to receive medical treatment is not legal under CMS regulations, unless the refusal gives rise to one of the permitted reasons for eviction from nursing homes.
Everything was gone, except for Social Security and a tiny pension (which wasn't enough to start covering nursing home expenses).). Attorneys specializing in nursing home abuse cases say that facilities across the country are breaking the rules when it comes to evicting nursing home residents. Nursing home residents who are moved, abandoned, or evicted from long-term care facilities are victims of nursing home abuse. While nursing homes have legitimate reasons to reject patients, it's important to recognize that residents also have rights that must be respected.
In this case, the nursing home manager must first document their reasonable attempts to resolve the problem before evicting the resident. A Phoenix nursing home lawyer can gather evidence to show that keeping the resident in the nursing home does not endanger others or exceed the facility's ability to provide appropriate care. The Nursing Home Reform Act (NHRA) of 1987 established federal guidelines to protect the rights and safety of nursing home residents, including protection against illegal evictions and transfers. Medicaid for nursing homes, also called institutional Medicaid, is a benefit program in all 50 states and the District of Columbia. Medicaid and Medicare regulations also require nursing homes to provide notice and plan for discharge.
Don't hesitate to ask questions about nursing home policies, the staff-to-resident ratio, and the services they offer. If a nursing home attempts to evict a resident, their reasons must be related to one of these six reasons. File an appeal An appeal must be filed with the Long Term Care Ombudsman of the state where the nursing home resident is being discharged unintentionally or has been threatened with eviction. In addition, the law requires that a nursing home address the problem and attempt to resolve it before giving the resident an eviction notice.
Ultimately, the responsibility lies with the state and, until the state has been informed and other steps have been taken, the patient should never be left in a nursing home or hospital. Some hospitals refuse to discharge patients to return to nursing homes, leaving families trapped between two institutions and reluctant to take responsibility.
