COURT UPHOLDS PATIENT RIGHTS – Nursing home resident ‘dumping’ ruled illegal

A CALIFORNIA COURT HAS ruled that a nursing home owned by a national chain violated state and federal laws when it refused to readmit a resident after a brief hospital stay.

The Sacramento County Superior Court sided with Gloria Single, represented by AARP Foundation and others, who sued a nursing facility in Sacramento called Pioneer House when she was blocked from returning after a hospital visit that lasted only a few hours.

Pioneer House is owned by the national chain Retirement Housing Foundation.

The practice, called “dumping” by critics, has been targeted by AARP as a violation of nursing facility residents’ rights.

“Resident dumping is elder abuse,” says William Alvarado Rivera, senior vice president for litigation at AARP Foundation. “This ruling recognizes that such abuse is not only immoral but also illegal under both federal and state civil rights laws.”

The lawsuit, brought on behalf of Single, who was 82 and had dementia when the facility refused her readmission in 2017, cited violations of laws that set strict standards for how nursing facilities can discharge residents in their care.

Single’s son Aubrey Jones said in an interview with aarp.org last year that refusing to allow his mother’s return was particularly agonizing because her husband, Bill, also lived at the facility.

The suit said Single was sent to the hospital after Pioneer House staff claimed she had gotten upset and thrown utensils in the dining room. Within hours the hospital determined she was fine to return home, but management refused to receive her, forcing her back to the hospital, where she stayed for three months before her son could get her into another nursing facility.

Single died in 2019, without ever reuniting with her husband.

Source: Apple News, AARP