A recent closed door meeting on disabled patient dumping breaks the law.
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by Leroy Moore/PNN On Thursday August 23rd 2007 over forty people, advocates and a few media correspondents were in front of San Francisco City Hall demanding that the Hospital Council open their meeting to the public regarding recent cases of homeless patients being dumped on the streets. According to Planning for Elders, the Hospital Council and Department of Health held a recent meeting on discharging homeless patients from hospitals but did not invite key stakeholders, as required by state law. Advocates and people who were dumped by hospitals took the mic outside this day to tell their stories and to remind us that the Hospital Council is breaking state law. During these powerful speeches, the Mayor got out of his limo and walked up the stairs. We invited him to speak on this manner but he just darted into City Hall. While I was standing there listening to these stories, my mind wandered back to POOR’s community newsroom that had happened just a few weeks before at the US Social Forum in Atlanta. Many people shared stories of community hospitals in their hometowns being shut down by the state government. These stories came from people who lived in New York, New Orleans, Puerto Rico, Detroit, LA and even from right in Atlanta, where just a few blocks away, the Grady Memorial Hospital was slated to be closed. Atlanta resident, Rev. Calvin E. Peterson, who was born at Grady Hospital in 1948 and also worked with the hospital on their accessibility plan, wrote in his book, Nothing Is Impossible: Spiritual & Social Activist for Disability Rights & The Independent Living Movement, that Grady Hospital is the only county hospital that accepts poor people. He also told me in a recent interview that the Black poor community would be in an uproar if the state closed down Grady Hospital. With hospitals on the edge of closing from Georgia to California, it makes no sense why here in San Francisco the Hospital Council is breaking the federal law of 1986 Emergency Medical Treatment and Act of Labor Act ("EMTALA) and state law AB 2745. In addition, I learned that some years ago California Hospitals Association produced a manual entitled, A Guide to Patient Anti-Dumping Laws. So why can’t they fellow what they preach? Why are they holding closed meetings that break state and federal laws? Many at the rally said that because they, the hospital council members, are represented by multi million dollar healthcare industry companies, they try at all costs to keep them out of trouble. The legislation was designed to get community stakeholders to work together to solve the problem; however this will be impossible until the Council opens its meetings to the public who are directly affected by this legislation. For more information contact James Chionsini at Planning for Elders (415) 871-8783 or email james@planningforeleders.org or www.planningforelders.org |