ATTORNEY NEWSLETTER
“Boomeranging” Nursing Home Residents
“When in doubt, ship them out” is an all too unfortunate saying in nursing homes. The saying refers to a common nursing home practice of shipping residents to hospitals for non-clinical reasons, chiefly that the patient may need slightly more care than the nursing home is willing to staff or pay for. The receiving hospital in turn discharges the patient as soon as possible, the end result being that the nursing home resident is “boomeranged” back to the nursing home. The nursing home may in turn order a quick re-hospitalization and vulnerable patients find themselves ping-ponged between nursing homes and hospitals. The practice is deplorable and wreaks havoc on the resident’s physical and emotional well-being.
The San Francisco and California nursing home abuse attorneys at Evans Law Firm, Inc. understand what can go horribly wrong when a resident is boomeranged between hospitals and nursing homes or otherwise abandoned, neglected or abused. We represent elderly victims of such abuse and our attorneys know how to investigate these cases and what remedies are available to the victims. If you or someone you know is suffering from nursing home abuse here in San Francisco or elsewhere in California, call the nursing home abuse attorneys at Evans Law Firm today at 415-441-8669, and we can help.
Boomeranging Can Cause Serious Harm
Patients shuttled back and forth from nursing homes to hospitals and back again often suffer terribly as a result of such treatment. Hospitals push patients out the door quickly. Nursing homes keep medical staffs to a minimum to save costs and fail to handle post-hospital complications properly— or create new problems by not following discharge instructions. At the first opportunity the home sends the patient back to the hospital for another round trip. Many residents caught in this cycle also suffer from dementia and the constant change of surroundings and caregivers is bewildering and physically and mentally exhausting. Sadly, economics drive much of this practice given Medicare and Medicaid pay schedules for hospitalizations versus nursing home residencies. Whatever the economics or the motivation, one thing is certain – it’s the patients who suffer.
Contact Us
If you or a loved one is or has been the victim of nursing home abuse in San Francisco or elsewhere in California, contact Ingrid M. Evans and the other nursing home abuse attorneys at the Evans Law Firm at (415) 441-8669, or by email at <a href=”mailto:info@evanslaw.com”>info@evanslaw.com</a>. We can help guide your case through a jury trial or toward an equitable settlement. We handle cases involving physical and financial elder abuse, qui tam and whistleblower law, nursing home abuse, whole life insurance and universal life insurance, and indexed, variable, and fixed annuities.
