“Ohio’s nursing homes are dumping patients at homeless shelters,” headlined an April 13 Signal Ohio news story. The outrageous tossing aside of a human life it describes is not something occurring just in Ohio, similar dumps have been reported elsewhere. They highlight the social and moral crisis of capitalism, where the drive for profit by “health” industry bosses takes precedence over providing care for those who need it most.
“A woman using a walker had shown up, incontinent and carrying ‘a large bag of medications,’” the Signal Ohio reported. “She was diabetic, managing a tibia fracture and alcohol-related dementia, and she was ‘dumped’ at the shelter.”
According to an Aug. 3, 2023, report on the nursing home’s actions by federal inspectors from the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, this woman, described only as “Resident #83,” was discharged for the crime of drinking some beer by the Eastland Rehabilitation and Nursing Center in Columbus. She had been living there less than two months.
The homeless shelter at first refused to admit her, forcing her to wait outside in the late summer heat, saying she would have to wait because there were about 100 people on the line before her. After awhile, shelter authorities allowed her to sit in the lobby with a glass of cold water, and told her they would try to find her a spot to stay.
“Committed To Excellence” is how the Eastland nursing home pitches itself on its website. It says the facility is “committed to delivering exceptional long-term care and short-term rehabilitation.
“We cultivate a caring atmosphere that mirrors the comforts of home,” it claims. But the horror of what Resident 83 experienced gives the lie to this.
“We are starting to deal with it more and more,” Chip Wilkins, who leads the Ohio city of Dayton’s Long Term Care Ombudsman program, told the media. Nursing home operators “try and send them to hospitals and not take them back. Or drop them off at homeless shelters. I would say, certainly over the last six months there has been an uptick.” In fact, in Ohio alone, some 13,000 individuals are discharged from nursing homes every month.
Forcing nursing home patients into homeless shelters is all too often a death sentence. Many of these older and sickly people have no family to care for them, are dependent on walkers or wheelchairs, and can’t begin to climb into the bunk beds common to overcrowded shelters today. And these shelters are not set up to help them take the 10 to 20 medications they often need daily.
Dumped after 22 years
In another Ohio nursing home, the Laurels of Hillsboro, a patient who had been there for more than 22 years was discharged last December and taken to a homeless shelter that only provides food and housing for a maximum of 90 days. The patient, who was diabetic with a history of glaucoma, cataracts and suspected autism, told federal inspectors who interviewed him that the nursing home staff never told him where he was going. But they wanted to get rid of him because his insurance company had stopped making payments to the home.
Nursing homes are notorious for high prices. At Laurels of Hillsboro the average cost is $7,406 a month, nearly $89,000 a year. And if you need additional or more personalized, services you have to pay more. This facility is owned by Ciena Healthcare, which operates 83 other long-term care facilities across the country.
Similarly, Signal Ohio reports, “at New Lebanon Rehabilitation and Healthcare Center, a woman’s insurer sent her a termination letter for her treatment for a series of neural and spinal disorders, plus depression and arthritis.” New Lebanon is 10 miles from Dayton. “While she was entitled to 30 days’ notice, the facility gave her roughly 24 hours before discharging her to a homeless shelter.”
Care for the elderly in the U.S. is purely a profit-making enterprise. For the capitalist rulers, workers who can no longer generate income by their labor are no longer useful. The experiences documented here show they are prime candidates to be sloughed off and forgotten. This is a crime against humanity.