Nevada pays S.F. for 'patient dumping' scheme
Source: San Francisco Chronicle
San Francisco residents wonder why the city streets are home to so many lost and forlorn mentally ill drifters. Now there’s a documented reason: Nevada callously shipped its unwanted psychiatric patients here to be rid of them.
In a tentative settlement, Nevada is agreeing to pay $400,000 to San Francisco to end a lawsuit over what has been called Greyhound therapy, the practice of shipping indigent patients elsewhere. In this case, a state psychiatric hospital in Las Vegas allegedly sent 24 homeless former mental patients to this city with one-way bus tickets and little else.
The inexcusable practice came to light when a frail, elderly man stepped off a bus in Sacramento with a handful of snacks and a three-day supply of medications. He ended up in a local hospital before his background was discovered and detailed by the Sacramento Bee. A similar case was described in a Chronicle story: A deaf and blind man, discharged from the same Las Vegas hospital, ended up homeless in San Francisco with no family, friends or care awaiting him.
City Attorney Dennis Herrera sued Nevada, claiming the state was behind 1,500 similar cases of patient dumping. Nevada fended off the claims but also fired several hospital employees, changed discharge rules and poured money into mental health budgets. The Las Vegas hospital, the state’s largest mental health facility, lost its accreditation briefly and a federal health care agency added to the pressure by warning the state to clean up its practices or lose Medicare funding.
Read more: http://www.sfchronicle.com/opinion/editorials/article/Nevada-pays-S-F-for-patient-dumping-scheme-6554737.php?t=4a8bd8c49100af33be&cmpid=fb-premium
It's a start!
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